James D. Bamford, Benjamin Gomes-Casseres and Michael J. Robinson have put together an interesting collection of essays about the life cycle of alliances and the people in charge of these alliances. Rightly, the authors emphasize alliance strategy rather than strategic alliance. The essays are grouped around four themes: designing alliances, managing alliances, competing in constellations and building an alliance capability. Practitioners can reflect on their own alliances to see what they eventually can do better to further improve their performance in each of the four areas. The authors close their treatise by looking at some master builders. The authors correctly point out that there is no one solution for all. What works in one company can fail in another. Corporate culture plays a key role in making difficult to successfully borrow alliance best practices from other companies for another organization usage. As a side note, "Building, Leading and Managing Strategic Alliances" by Fred A. Kuglin is a good complement to the topics covered in "Mastering Alliance Strategy."