My point is that given enough contortion or reduction, one can apply any real life strategy to almost any strategy game.

In the first example of controlling the middle vs the edges, well, there are chess openings with the strategy of explicitly giving up the center. A reply in a different chain on this post mentions these, known as hypermodern openings.

It does sound like a good book since I'm a fan of history, chess, and go, so I'll give it a read.