War on the Rocks
Holiday Reading List
By
Ryan Evans
Thank you all for
supporting this publication with your loyalty. In the months since we
launched in July, War on the Rocks has succeeded beyond my expectations.
We owe that to you.
To mark the holiday season,
I asked our regular contributors and editors to name two or three books on
strategy, war, international politics, or history (including fiction) that they
are excited about this holiday season and that our readers might enjoy.
You can find the list below
(or download it here as a PDF). The astonishing range of
books selected reflects the diversity in experience and expertise of our family
of contributors.
If you’re looking for
gifts, for yourself or that special War on the Rocks fan in your life, you
could do worse than pick one of these.
Best,
Ryan Evans
2013
Holiday Season Reading List
John Amble
Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2013) by Steve Coll – This
book offers a view into the workings of a multinational corporation in an era
when the annual revenues of some such companies surpass those of the
governments in many states where they operate and in an industry constantly shaped
by geopolitical developments.
The Terrorists Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations by Jake Shapiro (2013) –
This book is the first to assess the challenges posed by terrorist groups from
an organizational perspective. As the body of terrorism literature
continues to expand rapidly, there are fewer and fewer truly innovative
analyses being produced. This is one of them.
B.J. Armstrong
Allied Master Strategists: The Combined Chiefs of Staffs
in World War II by
David Rigby (2013).
Seapower: A Guide for the 21st Century, 3rd Edition, by Geoffrey
Till (2013).
21st Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for the
Modern Era by
Benjamin Armstrong (2013) – Shameless plug
Tricia Bacon
Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba by Stephen Tankel (2012)
Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage by David Ignatius (2012)
J. Michael Barrett
This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet
Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich (2013) – A sad
but true tale.
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education
of a President by
Ron Suskind (2011) – Another good basic DC-insider book
John Bew
Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House by Peter Baker (2013).
Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School
Contribution to the War Effort by Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse & Otto
Kirchheimer, Edited by Raffaele Laudani (2013).
Jason Campbell
Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerilla Warfare from
Ancient Times to the Present by Max Boot (2103) – As with War Made New,
Boot provides a comprehensive historical examination of conflict to remind us
that many of today’s security challenges are rooted in past battles. While at
times lacking in depth, this shows that quantity has a quality all its own and
reads great.
Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear
Devastation by
Lynn Eden (2006) – A few years old but something I read this year as part of my
PhD research. Great examination of how the human factor plays into the
development of a technology and how even the best and brightest can overlook
crucial aspects that fall outside their area of expertise.
Elbridge Colby
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings (2013).
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark (2013)
– Both on how to avoid repeating WWI.
John Collins
At the Center of the Storm: My Years At the CIA by George Tenet (2007) – A
much maligned man who I know to be a dedicated public servant tells his side of
the story.
The Journey of a Warrior: The Twenty-Ninth Commandant of
the US Marine Corps (1987-1991): General Alfred Mason Gray by Gerald H. Turley (2010)
– A Marines’ Marine, who did it all his way and helped me more times than I can
count.
Robert Collins
The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical
Greece by
Victor Davis Hanson (1989).
Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation By Weaker Powers by T.V. Paul (1994).
Adam Elkus
War in the Age of Intelligent Machines by Manuel de Landa
(1991) – A worthy companion to P.W. Singer’s Wired for War,
philosopher of science de Landa tells the story of how foundational concepts
and technologies in computer science, artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and
control theory coevolved with political, social, and organizational aspects of
warfare since the Renaissance. De Landa argues that warfare is becoming
increasingly delegated to machine intelligence because trends in conflict have
mirrored — and often triggered — the evolution of computational technologies.
Essentials
of Metaheuristics by Sean Luke (2013) – What do you do when you have a
problem you need to solve, can distinguish between alternatives, but
nonetheless can’t envision what an optimal solution looks like? (Hello,
Afghanistan!) How do you cope when information is incomplete and you lack the
resources to search the full space of possible solutions? We use “good enough”
heuristics to solve problems in everyday life, and the growing field of metaheuristics
is about how to generate, select, or find heuristic solutions.
Janice Elmore
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s
Police Forces by
Radley Balko (2013).
Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban
Guerrilla by
David Kilcullen (2013).
Ryan Evans
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War,
1890-1914 by
Barbara W. Tuchman (1966) – The hundredth anniversary of the year before
World War I is, in many ways, just as important to remember and reflect upon as
the war itself. Europe was enjoying an exciting period of prosperity,
cultural flourishing, and stability. Very few predicted it would implode
on itself – a lesson worth remembering.
America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the
Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Hugh Wilford (2013) – A highly
entertaining read featuring members of the Roosevelt clan and others as they
build America’s intelligence infrastructure in the Middle East.
War, Welfare & Democracy: Rethinking America’s Quest
for the End of History by Peter J. Munson (2013) – Peter, one of our
columnists, is a talented writer and a deep thinker and this book is a great
intellectual achievement.
Brian Fishman
The Terrorists Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert
Organizations by
Jake Shapiro (2013) – One of the best books on terrorism in years.
Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial
Warfare by
Juan Zarate (2013)
David Fuquea
The Wounded Giant: America’s Armed Forces in an Age of
Austerity by
Michael O’Hanlon (2011).
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
The Wars of Afghanistan by Peter Tomsen
(2011). This is, in my opinion, the finest English-language history of
that country. Tomsen’s volume is a surprisingly engaging read for its
prodigious length, containing a great deal of original information and insight,
and is a genuinely good book, of which there are too few these days.
Qatar: Small State, Big Politics by Mehran Kamrava (2013)
– This book examines how a small state like Qatar can wield such
influence and power (which Kamrava dubs “subtle power”) in today’s
international system, and whether this ascent is sustainable. There is a
serious dearth of literature about this state that has done so much in recent
years to reshape the international order, and Kamrava makes a serious effort to
contextualize Qatari foreign policy.
Robert Goldich
The SADF [South African Defence Force] in the Border War
1966-1989 by
Leopold Scholtz (2013).
Mission
Commander: Swedish Experience of Command in the Expeditionary Era by Lotta Victor
Tilberg and Peter Tilberg (2011).
Admiral John Harvey
Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman (2013).
America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force by Beth Bailey (2009).
Robert Haddick
The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret McMillan
(2013).
1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War by Charles Emerson (2013).
Matthew Hipple
Spymaster: My Thirty-Two Years in Intelligence and
Espionage Against the West by Oleg Kalugin (2009).
Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal and Riverine Warfare in
Vietnam by
Thomas J. Cutler (2012).
Frank Hoffman
Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman (2013).
The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Policy, Diplomacy and War by Williamson Murray,
Richard Sinnreich, and Jim Lacey (2011).
Timothy Hoyt
The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923 by Charles Townshend – One
of the best works on Ireland’s war with England from 1916-1921 (2013).
1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy by Tom Garvin – For those
interested in national-building, civil wars, emerging democracies, and other
contemporary topics.
Mike Jacobson
The Jamestown Experiment: The Remarkable Story of the
Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results That Shaped America by Tony Williams (2011).
The Generals by Tom Ricks (2013).
Dave Kasten
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham (1944).
Lauren Katzenberg
My Share of the Task by General Stanley McChrystal (2013).
Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and
Their Country by
Andrew Bacevich (2013).
Sean Kay
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest
Journey by
Candice Millard (2006).
Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis –
Suez and the Brink of War by Jim Newton (2011).
John Kuehn
21st Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for
the Modern Era by
B. J. Armstrong (2013)
The Plan that Broke the World by Will O’Neil
Tom Lynch
The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-45 by Rick Atkinson (2013).
Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God by Matthew Levitt (2013).
Myra MacDonald
Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (2008, 2011) – These are the
first two in a trilogy on the opium trade between India and China and the
events leading up to the First Opium War.
David Maxwell
Marked For Life: Songbun, North Korea’s Social
Classification System by Robert Collins (2013) – This should be required
reading for those who want to plan for unconventional warfare in North
Korea, a post Kim Family Regime North Korea and Korean reunification.
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
(2012). Although some may scoff at the plot of this Pulitzer Prize
winning novel, the book actually operationalizes and brings to life the report
by Robert Collins. These two should be read together.
Bryan McGrath
The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command by Andrew Gordon (1995) –
Great storytelling. Incredible research. Fallible men.
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin (1991) –
One of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read. Certainly
the most beautifully written war novel I have ever read.
Kathleen McInnis
Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft and World Order by Charles Hill (2011) –
Don’t expect a grand strategy cookbook from this work. Regardless of what you
think about Professor Hill and/or his interpretations of the text, the
important point is this: fictional and artistic narrative is key to
understanding strategy. Great fiction gives us the intuitive, creative space to
explore really big ideas in ways that powerpoints and think tank reports cannot
possibly manage.
Steven Metz
The Modern American Military by David M. Kennedy, ed
(2013).
The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror
Became a Global War on Tribal Islam by Akbar Ahmed (2013).
Peter Munson
Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to
International Economic Crises by Peter Gourevitch (1986).
Warfare in Antiquity, Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV, by Hans Delbruck – For its discussion of
the drivers of warfare and development of the attrition/annihilation dichotomy.
Michael Noonan
An Introduction to Strategy: with particular reference to
problems of defence, politics, economics, and diplomacy in the nuclear age by General D’Armée
André Beaufre translated by Major General R.H. Barry
(1965).
The new frontier of war: Political warfare, present and
future by
William R. Kintner and Joseph Z. Kornfeder (1962).
Afshon Ostovar
The War for America, 1775-1783 by Piers Mackesy (1964).
The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New
Revolutionaries by
Neville Bolt (2012).
William Park
Tree of Smoke: A Novel by Denis Johnson (2008).
Elton Parker
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (2006).
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph Ellis (2002).
Tom Quiggin
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins – This
series features the United States at an undated point in the future where the
capital city enjoys wealth, power and technology and amuses itself with fancy
dress, games and vomitoriums. The rest of the country is divided into 12
(formerly 13) districts and is forced into servitude.
Seeds of Dystopia (2012) – This Davos Foundation risk
report offers a vision of the future remarkably to The Hunger Games, albeit one
fictional and the other by the advisors to the richest and most powerful
people in the world.
Bill Rosenau
Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic
America
(2002) by Tom Vanderbilt – A witty, evocative, and often moving exploration of
“a history that never happened” (Washington Post). Part travelogue, part
architectural study, and part nuclear history, Survival City beautifully
captures the physical, aesthetic, and psychological wreckage left behind by the
nuclear age.
Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the
Caribbean by
Alex von Tunzelmann (2011) - Marxisant folklore would have us believe
that regimes in the developing world were mere creatures of their superpower
masters. In her shimmering, pulsating narrative, von Tunzelmann shows how
“puppets” like Rafael Trujilo, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and Fidel Castro
pulled their own strings by using the United States and the Soviet Union
against their Caribbean enemies.
Jonathan Rue
Buying National Security: How America Plans and Pays for
Its Global Role and Safety at Home by Gordon Adams (2009) – Because the
budget is policy.
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America,
1815-1848 by
Daniel Walker Howe (2007) – This book, of the Oxford History of the U.S.
series, explores the growth of the U.S. from 1814-1848. Lots of lessons about
the role of government as the U.S. expanded westward and sectionalist
sentiments rose.
Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of
Intelligence by
Joshua Rovner (2011) – Excellent description of the proper relationship between
intelligence agencies and the government, and how governments politicize
intelligence to their own ends.
Usha Sahay
The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis (1989).
Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s
Perilous Path in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi (2005).
Kori Schake
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1992) – Populated with
his trademark psychopaths’ predations, profligacy of harm and knowingly
resigned victims, it’s hardly a book for the season, but it contains a
terrifyingly vivid and accurate description of Comanche raiding. Unforgettably
brings the Indian Wars to life.
Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead (2010) – An award-winning
novel about the moment when warfare became modern, this, too, is about subduing
what is now the American southwest at the outbreak of World War I. Set
during an earlier military transformation, from small squads on horseback
operating where the physical environment was itself a dominant threat and the
enemy had numerous advantages to the dawn of mechanized warfare Americans would
come to dominate. Best of all, though, it’s a portrait of
leadership when all hope is lost.
Anna Simons
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk (1971).
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest
for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown (2013).
Stan Sloan
The Guns at Last Light, The War in Western Europe,
1944-1945 by
Rick Atkinson (2013). The third in a series, the author paints a vivid
picture of WWII.
MLR Smith
Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the Secret
Special Forces War in Iraq by Mark Urban – Because I want to find out
what really was responsible for the decline in violence in Iraq after 2007…and
I don’t think it was the “surge” (2012).
Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II by Michael Burleigh – A
monster of a book, but his take on the ethical dimensions of WW2 sounds
intriguing (2012).
Daniel Steed
Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman (2013).
Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis by Richards J. Heuer Jr.
and Randolph H. Pherson (2011).
Mark Stout
Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War, and
the Twilight of Empire by Calder Walton (2013) – Written by a protégé of
Christopher Andrew’s this shows that there is still much to be learned about
the end of the British Empire. This book will also interest people who
are interested in intelligence culture and hints that there would be more to be
learned about COIN if we were able to fully plumb intelligence records.
Terrorism and Counterintelligence: How Terrorist Groups
Elude Detection by Blake W. Mobley (2012) – Mobley brings together the
two fields of counterterrorism and counterintelligence in interesting ways.
Stephen Tankel
Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman (2013).
Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an
Epic History of Misunderstanding by Husain Haqqani (2013).
John Thorne
Last Men Out: The True Story of America’s Heroic Final
Hours in Vietnam by Bob Dury and Tom Clavin (2011) – The organizational
cultures of the US military, state department, and intelligence community in
Afghanistan have many similarities to their Vietnam-era predecessors.
This book gives a scary preview of what the fall of Kabul could look like.
How China Became Capitalist by Ronald Coase and Ning
Wang (2013) – Brilliant book describing the economic transformation in China
from Mao to now.
Marc Tyrell
Changing Minds In The Army: Why It Is So Difficult and
What To Do About It by Dr. Stephen J. Gerras, Dr. Leonard Wong (2013).
Come and Take Them by Tom Kratman (2013).
Joshua Walker
Headscarf: The Day Turkey Stood Still by Richard Peres (2012) –
I just finished reading this delightful gem of a book about the election
of 30-year-old Merve Kavakci in 1999 to the Turkish Grand National Assembly to
take her oath of office wearing her Islamic headscarf. A near riot ensued;
deputies shouted for her to get out and banged on their desks, and the Prime
Minister of Turkey told the crowd to put this woman in her place.
Ultimately, she was prevented from taking her oath, persecuted by the
government, harangued by the Turkish press, threatened with prison, raided by
the police, had her citizenship revoked and lost her seat in Parliament. Turkey
just recently allowed headscarfed women into Parliament and the main players of
this story continue to run Turkey to this day.
Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John
Heilemann (2013) – Those of us in DC cannot really resist the detailed and
intimate beltway gossip this book offers. It was both as satisfying and
unfulfilling as I expected. Juicy tidbits such as Michele Obama’s fascination
with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and practice of calling Valerie Jarrett to lecture
various West Wing characters along with the allegation that Obama’s team
thought of replacing Vice President Biden with Hillary Clinton made up for the
mostly chronological flow of news events throughout the 2012 election. Given
that I normally focus on international events it was an opportunity to relax
and learn about DC’s more humorous and mundane happenings.
John Allen Williams
Cain at Gettysburg by Ralph Peters (2012) – In addition to
being a well-written page turner, the book takes a different view on Gen. Meade
from the accepted wisdom that he was unconscionably slow in pursuing Gen. Lee
after the battle.
Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood (1981) – As the
great-great-grandson of a Civil War colonel from New Hampshire, I have been
slow to warm up to Robert E. Lee. The story of his relatively brief life
after the war as president of Washington University (later Washington and Lee)
shows a different side of him that is far more attractive.
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