Schelling's works are necessary reads. They are important, but every time I look at them I come away thinking of them more as codifications than novel concepts. He did put names to previously unnamed dynamics (game theory) but when I read history I cannot believe that people pre-Schelling didn't already know and work with these concepts daily. I'd say that he did great service in documenting and understanding the dynamics. His work allows everyone to up their game. But I read his work more as I would read the work of a psychiatrist 'discovering' a new disease. The disease has always been there and now the doc is documenting it in a way so that other docs may recognize and discuss it more easily.