Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone (1992)

This is a story of game theory/minimax theory (which in one of its earliest form was used to identify bombing targets), with a biography of John von Neumann as related, the research and creation of first atomic bombs and the hydrogen bomb, the preventative war theory as subscribed to many in the US armed forces and government and the first think tank, the RAND.
A two person interaction can be categorized as Prisoner's Dilemma (gain by testifying against your conspirator), Chicken (think "game of chicken"), Deadlock (encourages defection) and Stag Hunt (encourages cooperation). Discussions and experiments suggest, that defection (non-cooperation, "selfish gene"?) could be a good strategy for many of single interactions, while cooperation works well for repeated interactions, where players use various strategies. Interestingly the best strategy for simulations of Prisoner's Dilemma is TIT-FOR-TAT (or "almost" TIT-FOR-TAT), where the player cooperates until the other party starts defecting, than it defects until the other party starts cooperating. While these theories do somewhat match the realities of two player games, they are much less applicable to multi party games, especially where players are allowed/encouraged to form alliances (as it happens in real life situations).