JFSC Commandant's Professional Reading List

15 Stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall: Three Generals Who Saved the American Century, by Stanley Weintraub. New York: Free Press, 2007.

The lives of the three five-star generals, intertwined against the background of six decades, from two world wars to the Cold War, is history at its most dramatic. Their story opens a fascinating window onto some of the twentieth century’s most crucial events and reveals the personalities behind the public images. Counterparts and on occasion competitors, they had leapfrogged each other, sometimes stonewalled each other, even supported and protected each other throughout their celebrated careers. In the public mind they stood for integrity and competence. But for dramatic twists of circumstance, all three -- rather than only one -- might have occupied the White House.

An Army at Dawn:  The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, by Rick Atkinson.  New York:  Henry Holt & Co., 2002.

The campaign in North Africa was the first joint military operation conducted by the Allies during World War II, and it proved pivotal to their ultimate victory. Opening with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the inexperienced and often poorly led American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algiers, and then the Germans and Italians in Tunisia, gradually becoming a superb fighting force.  Central to the tale are the extraordinary but flawed commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.

The Battle for Peace:  A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose, by Anthony C. Zinni.  New York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

This book provides much "food for thought," as the former CENTCOM commander gives his views on American primacy and makes a call for a new approach to national security and foreign policy issues.   Between extensive first-person narratives and comments on historical events, GEN Zinni promotes alternative strategies based on a re-direction of American power and influence and a deeper understanding of the world at large.   Major factors, such as the end of the Cold War, globalization, and rapid technological advances have changed the world, demanding innovative, non-military solutions to advance peace and stability. 

Cobra II:  The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor.  New York:  Pantheon Books, 2006.

Michael Gordon, military correspondent for The New York Times, and LtGen Bernard Trainor, USMC-Ret, spent three years researching this detailed, comprehensive, and contemporary history of the Iraq War.  Gordon, embedded with the Coalition Forces Land Component Command, and Trainor, who retired as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Policies and Operations and Marine Corps Deputy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1983, previously co-authored The Generals’ War.  For Cobra II, they interviewed numerous military personnel at all levels, including students and staff at the military colleges, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, Secretary of State Rice and many other State Department and White House officials. 

"The United State’s hopes for a lightning victory were quickly dashed and it suffered mounting casualties.  None of this was inevitable.  The U.S. military commanders who battled their way to Baghdad … believed that there was a window of opportunity in the early weeks and months of the invasion, which was allowed to close.  Though some degree of opposition was unavoidable, the virulent insurgency that emerged was not inevitable but was aided by military and political blunders in Washington." (Epilogue, p. 506)

Numerous maps, photographs, detailed notes, and an appendix including internal planning documents add to the value of this book.

Counterinsurgency Warfare:  Theory and Practice, by David Galula.  New York:  Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006.

Written by a French military officer who served in World War II, China, Greece, and Algeria, this is considered the classic text on counterinsurgency.  Though originally published in 1964, contemporary reviewers (Daly, Killebrew, Hammes) see great value in applying its concepts to today’s wars.  Concisely written, the chapters of this short book address the nature of revolutionary war, insurgency, counterinsurgency, strategy and tactics, and a step-by-step guide to defeating the insurgents, influencing and controlling the population, and establishing political stability.  For emphasis, LTC Galula cites historical examples and his own various experiences throughout the book. 

This book is also available electronically through the Praeger Security International Online database.

Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, by H.R. McMaster. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998.

Dereliction of Duty is an analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out war in Southeast Asia. Fully researched, based on recently released transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it re-creates what happened and why. It also pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into a quagmire and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, including President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and others.

Not a Good Day to Die:  The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda, by Sean Naylor.  New York:  Berkley Books, 2005.

Army Times writer Sean Naylor was an embedded journalist with the 101^st Airborne Division troops in Afghanistan during some of the planning and execution of Operation Anaconda.  He presents in great detail both the successes and failures of this operation.  The undercurrents of this book provide not only an excellent account of planning and execution, but also a study in military-media relations.  Through extensive first hand experience, interviews and research, Mr. Naylor respectfully presents the story of the "chaos and courage" of the operational forces and at the same time provides a critical and negative assessment of Operation Anaconda, detailing the shortcomings of the mission. 

The Pentagon and the Presidency:  Civil-Military Relations from FDR to George W. Bush, by Dale R. Herspring.  Lawrence:  University Press of Kansas, 2005.

In this groundbreaking reassessment of a key relationship in American government and foreign policymaking,Herspring clearly shows the changing nature of military-civilian relations during the past half century. Viewing this relationship from the generals’ perspective, he measures the level of conflict in each administration and reveals how the military has become a powerful bureaucratic interest group very much like others in Washington – increasingly politicized, media-savvy, and as much accountable to the Congress as to the commander-in-chief.

The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives, by Robert Guest. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004.

Why is Africa so poor? Why are so many of its nations at war? Why is AIDS devastating Africa like nowhere else? And why do African entrepreneurs find it so hard to borrow money? In this provocative and thoughtful book, Guest argues that the continent remains poor primarily because it is badly governed. What Africa needs is peace, the rule of law, and greater freedom for individuals to pursue prosperity without hindrance from their rulers. The prescription may sound simple, but it is tough to administer, as Guest's investigations from Angola to Zimbabwe reveal.

The Sling and the Stone:  On Warfare in the 21^st Century, by Thomas X. Hammes.  St. Paul, MN:  Zenith Press, 2004.

Thomas X. Hammes, a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, is recognized as an expert in insurgent warfare.  The Sling and the Stone describes the evolution of insurgency beginning with Mao and his tactics.  Hammes includes not only Mao’s tactics but analyses of conflicts in Vietnam, Nicaragua, the Middle East during the Intifada, Afghanistan, and Iraq.   Colonel  Hammes feels that we have failed to understand and to prepare for insurgencies.  He describes Fourth Generation War and equates it with insurgency.   His extensive experience in training insurgents and his years of studying military history enable him to make support arguments and offer recommendations for reforming the military’s personnel and organizational structure in order to defeat future unconventional threats.

Supreme Command:  Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, by Eliot A. Cohen.  New York:  Free Press, 2002.

Eliot Cohen, professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, writes in his introduction to Supreme Command:   "This is a book about leadership in wartime – or more precisely about the tension between two kinds of leadership, civil and military."  Beginning with a general discussion of civil-military relations, Cohen focuses on four wartime leaders and discusses their leadership styles, their very different situations and challenges, and their approaches to what Cohen calls "varied predicaments." Winston Churchill, Georges Clemenceau, Abraham Lincoln, and David Ben Gurion are the statesmen in question. An appendix on civilian control theory and an after word entitled "Rumsfeld’s War" add value to this selection

Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, by John Lewis Gaddis.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2004.

In its response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration broke from Roosevelt’s World War II grand strategy of cooperation with allies on an intercontinental scale and devised a new strategy, whose foundations lie in the nineteenth-century tradition of unilateralism, preemption, and hegemony. How successful it will be in the face of twenty-first-century challenges is the question that confronts us.  Gaddis’ provocative book, informed by the experiences of the past but focused on the present and the future, is one of the first attempts by a major scholar of grand strategy and international relations to provide an answer.

The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, by Rupert Smith. New York: Knopf, 2007.

General Smith draws on his vast experience as a commander in the 1991 Gulf War, in Bosnia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland, to give us a probing analysis of modern war and to call for radically new military thinking. From Iraq to the Balkans, and from Afghanistan to Chechnya, Smith charts a stream of armed interventions that have failed to deliver on promises of resolution. He demonstrates why today’s conflicts must be understood as intertwined political and military events and makes clear why the current one-size-fits-all model of total war fought out on battlefields must be abandoned in favor of new strategies that take into account the fact that wars are now fought among civilian populations. In the end, he offers a compelling new model for how to fight these battles—and secure our world.

The World is Flat:  A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, by Thomas L. Friedman.  New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

The World is Flat describes a mix of concurrent trends the author expects to define the 21st century. The book makes accessible to the lay reader the origins, development and significance of these world-shaping phenomena.  From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the ubiquity of powerful personal telecommunications devices, Friedman examines the fundamental changes our world is experiencing and how these changes continue to affect the United States.

TOP