Want to keep up with current trends in military affairs to further your professional development? Are you looking for classic military literature to inspire your thinking? MOAA's reviewer Col. William Bushnell, USMC-Ret., has put together a compilation of Contemporary Books and Vintage Books that will keep you turning the pages.
Each list is updated twice a year to provide a wide variety of subject and thought and to highlight books that might not appear on other professional reading lists. The contemporary list is updated in July and January; the vintage list is updated in April and October.
And there's more. At the end of these two lists, you will find MOAA's unscientific sampling of the reading lists from the JCS chairman, the service chiefs, and other national leaders. We've come up with some favorites, which are listed On Everyone's List.
You also may want to check out the professional reading lists compiled by National Defense University (NDU). There you'll find recommendations from each military service and other prominent sources.
Order these books through MOAA's Amazon Store!
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Battle Exhortation: The Rhetoric of Combat Leadership
By Keith Yellin. University of South Carolina Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-57003-735-1.
The speeches of military commanders inspiring their men to fight are not just colorful Hollywood movie gimmicks; they are real, they are expected, and they can have tremendous impact on battle preparation, according to author Keith Yellin. This original book explores how battlefield rhetoric uses reason and passion to motivate men to go forth into battle. Among Yellin’s many vivid examples of effective battlefield exhortation are the ancient Greeks at the Battle of Mantinea in 418 B.C., General George S. Patton’s speech to the Third Army in 1944, Teddy Roosevelt’s mid-fight exhortation to his Rough Riders in Cuba in 1898, and Julius Caesar’s address to his Tenth Legion. This book is an excellent study of warrior inspiration.
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Technology and the American Way of War Since 1945
By Thomas G. Mahnken. Columbia University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-231-12336-5.
“No nation in recent history has placed greater emphasis on the role of technology in planning and waging war than the United States,” says Thomas Mahnken. He charts the qualitative technological advances of American military might and their application from the advent of nuclear weapons in 1945, through flexible response, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. However, despite U.S. superiority in science and technology, he correctly points out that while superior technology is essential, technology itself is a poor substitute for sound strategic thought.
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Piercing the Fog of War: Recognizing Change on the Battlefield
By Brian L. Steed. Zenith Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7603-3523-9.
The use of surprise in warfare is a fundamental principle of war. Aberration, however, is something so far outside an opponent’s frame of reference as to be totally unrecognizable and so disconnecting as to result in collapse and defeat. Aberration is the subject of this brilliant collection of battle studies. Author Brian Steed provides thorough, detailed analysis of battles where aberration proved decisive, from well-known battles like Little Big Horn, Cannae, and Trenton, to obscure fights like Yarmouk, the Horns of Hattin, and Grosny (Chechnya). This is a well-crafted, insightful presentation of fascinating military history.
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Barbarous Philosophers: Reflections on the Nature Of War From Heraclitus to Heisenberg
By Christopher Coker. Columbia University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-231-70198-3.
This unique, provocative, and scholarly volume claims “philosophers are the ones who created the concept of war, largely by defining its rules and establishing an oppositional dialectic of peace,” according to Professor Christiopher Coker. He uses the philosophical thoughts on war of 16 major thinkers to illustrate his argument that philosophers have heavily influenced the contemporary thinking of general and military strategy; from Heraclitus’s question “Why War?” in the 5th century B.C. to Aristotle’s comments on war and politics, Saint Augustine’s epistle on war and peace, and Machiavelli’s, Kant’s, and Nietzsche’s thoughts on war and society, ethics, and the warrior. This is heavy stuff, indeed, but fascinating just the same.
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Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits, and Empires: Private Violence in Historical Context
Edited by Alejandro Colas and Brian Mabee. Columbia University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-231-70208-9.
Private, or non-state, violence is gaining in popularity and frequency among terrorist organizations, criminal gangs, and private companies, and this increasingly lethal phenomenon gets solid treatment in this collection of nine lucid essays, which expose and analyze these uncontrolled violent actors. The contributors discuss pirates, privateers, mercenaries, warlords, bandits, smugglers, criminal organizations, and terrorists — all “groups that sustain themselves through violence committed outside and on the borders of state authority.” This can be taken as a cautionary warning to the future.
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A Walk in the Sun
By Harry Brown. Amereon Ltd., 1982. ISBN 0-884-1107-5-3.
Originally published in 1944, this is one of the most powerful, evocative novels of World War II. Written by Harry Brown, an acclaimed journalist and war correspondent, it tells the story of a platoon of U.S. Army infantrymen after landing at Salerno, Italy, with its leaders killed or missing. These men adapt and continue their mission to attack and capture a fortified farmhouse miles from the beach. Noted for its stark realism and vivid portrayal of men under extreme stress, this story is timeless in its message of courage and determination. The book was made into a terrific motion picture of the same name produced by Lewis Milestone Productions in 1945. It stars Dana Andrews, Lloyd Bridges, John Conte, and John Ireland.
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Helmet For My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific
By Robert Leckie. Bantam, 2010. ISBN 978-0-553-59331-0.
Journalist and historian Robert Leckie joined the Marine Corps in January 1942 as a private, later serving with the 1st Marine Division as a machinegunner at Guadalcanal, Solomons Islands; New Britain, Papua New Guinea; and Peleliu, Palau. This award-winning memoir was first published in 1957, and chronicles in graphic, profane detail recruit training, jungle warfare, and the uncertain, gritty life of an infantryman in the cauldron of the Pacific war. A young man's experiences in the horrors of war are vividly described, creating a powerful image of why Marines fight and fight so well. Leckie also wrote the classic history of the Marines in the Pacific, Strong Men Armed (Bantam, 1962).
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Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War
By Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch. The Free Press, 1990. ISBN 0-02-906060-5.
Aside from stupidity and incompetence as reasons for failure in war, Cohen and Gooch offer three compelling reasons why strong, capable militaries suffer defeat: failure to learn, failure to anticipate, and failure to adapt. The authors use five stark case studies to illustrate their points: Gallipoli in 1915, the fall of France in 1940, American antisubmarine warfare in 1942, the Suez front and the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and Korea in 1950. They succinctly describe why even the most professional military organizations fall victim to one or more of these three failures, often with catastrophic results.
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American Guerrilla In The Philippines
By Ira Wolfert. Simon & Schuster, 1945. No ISBN.
This cocky, politically incorrect book tells the remarkable story of Ensign Iliff David Richardson, USN, the XO of a PT boat in the Philippines left behind when the Americans surrendered in 1942. From 1942 to 1945, Richardson efficiently helped organize Filipino guerrilla groups on the islands of Leyte and Samar and operated clandestine radio stations to report intelligence, always on the run from ruthless Japanese pursuit. Although loaded with propaganda and honest but lurid appraisals of allies and enemies, heroes, and cowards, this is an inspiring story of American ingenuity and courage. In 1950 actor Tyrone Power starred in the movie of the same name produced by Twentieth Century Fox.
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What If? The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been
Edited by Robert Cowley. Berkley Books, 1999. ISBN 0-425-17642-8.
"We are the product of a future that might not have been," claims historian Robert Cowley in this marvelous collection of essays that imaginatively and plausibly describe counterfactual events in world military history. Famous historians William MacNeill, John Keegan, David McCullough, and Alistair Horne offer credible scenarios that probably would have changed history. For example, what if Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1815 or what if Hitler had not invaded Russia in 1941? Beautifully written, these are not merely "parlor games," but thoughtful efforts to see how weather, bad luck, poor decisions, and missed opportunities might have altered the future.
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On Everyone's List
The Art of War
By Sun Tzu. Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-4864-2557-6.
On War
By Carl von Clausewitz. Princeton University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-1404-4427-0.
The Face of Battle
By John Keegan. Vintage Books, 1977. ISBN 0-1400-4897-9.
Personal Memoirs: Ulysses S. Grant
By Ulysses S. Grant. Modern Library, 1999. ISBN 0375752285.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
By James M. McPherson. Ballantine Books, 1989. ISBN 0-1951-6895-X.
Crusade in Europe
By Dwight D. Eisenhower. Doubleday & Co., 1990. ISBN 0-8018-5668-X.
Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I
By John Eisenhower. Touchstone Books, 2002. ISBN 0-6848-6304-9.
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
By William Shirer. Touchstone Books, 1990. ISBN 0-6717-2868-7.
The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys and Men of World War II
By Stephen Ambrose. Simon and Schuster, 1998. ISBN 1-5689-5636-3.
We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young
By Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway. Random House, 1992. ISBN 0-6794-1158-5.
Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime
By Eliot Cohen. Anchor Books, 2003 ISBN 0-7432-3049-3.
The Korean War
By Max Hastings. Simon and Schuster, 1988. ISBN 0-6716-6834-X.
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