A traditional story to tell is that their are three schools of classification and the war came to a head in the 1970's and 80's and that cladism won. Something about the basic story is right, but I don't like the way it is typically told. For example, I don't consider myself a cladist nor, I think, do most systematists though "cladistics" does have particularly strong historical ties to Cornell and a number of faculty here would certainly call themselves cladists.
A survey piece about the different schools:
Defenders of each school:
Mayr's criticism of Hennig and Cladistics with Hennig's careful clarifying response about what cladistics actually is:
Homeostatic property clusters and natural kinds:
There is a lot of good work on the Tree of Life right now with reference to things like lateral gene transfer and other kinds of reticulation. Anything by Ford Doolittle is usually worth reading. Here is a draft of survey paper of mine on the Tree of Life.