Gen Gregory Martin
Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat by Giles Milton
This is a fascinating book about England's effort to create a team that would innovate special weapons for unconventional forces. The aim was to undermine, harass, and degrade Nazi abilities.
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
This is a novel that keeps readers on their toes. The Rose Code involves a variety of characters in both their professional (classified) settings and their personal relationships as they strive to break Nazi military codes. The style of presentation can be a bit of a whirlwind - moving backwards and forwards over a seven-year span - but it is the whirlwind helps the reader feel like they are in the action. This book gives the reader a front row seat to one of history’s most exciting use of military intelligence on a global scale.
Maj Katie McCarty
The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman
Suleyman is a co-founder of AI research lab DeepMind and the current CEO of Microsoft AI. When Bill Gates is asked which book best unpacks the stakes surrounding the future of artificial intelligence, this is the book he recommends. It is not overly technical and provides a forecast of how important the fusion of AI and biotechnologies will be. Those serving in the profession of arms need to be aware of this coming reality and be prepared for it.
Maj Joseph W Bledsoe III
The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Airpower Theory in Evolution and Fate of the U.S. Air Force by Carl Builder
In this 2010 book, Carl H. Builder investigates the relationship between the history of the US Air Force and its contribution to air power theory. Builder begins with an overview of the crisis of values within the Air Force, then works backwards into where the institution veered off track. In addition to his diagnostic analysis, Builder offers a prognosis of how these wrong turns might be corrected. The Icarus Syndrome will be of great interest to US Air Force professionals, military and aviation historians, and institutional psychologists.
The General’s War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor
This account of the war in the Persian Gulf takes readers behind the scenes at the Pentagon and White House to provide portraits of the top military commanders. Gordon and Trainor discuss what worked and what did not.
Aviators, The: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight by Winston Groom
This is the story of three extraordinary heroes who defined aviation at the dawn of military air power. Groom cleverly interweaves their tales, taking the reader on adventures through the first and second World Wars. The daring military raids and survival-at-sea feats of courage will appeal to fans of Unbroken, The Greatest Generation, and Flyboys. Each pilot set aside the comforts of home to return to combat in the skies. Doolittle, a brilliant aviation innovator, lead the daring Tokyo Raid as retaliation for Pearl Harbor. Lindbergh, hero of the first solo flight across the Atlantic, flew combat missions in the South Pacific. Rickenbacker, a World War I flying ace, bravely held his starving crew together as sharks circled their raft in the remote regions of the Pacific. Groom's interwoven presentation helps readers track commonalities - from broken homes to Medals of Honor, from fame to loss - and offers them as exemplars of the Greatest Generation.
Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces by Linda Robinson
Robinson follows US Special Forces from their first post-Vietnam combat operations in Panama, El Salvador, Desert Storm, Somalia, and the Balkans to their recent trials in Afghanistan and Iraq. She witnessed their secret sleuthing and unsung successes in southern Iraq, and recounts here for the first time the dramatic firefights of the western desert. Robinson's blow-by-blow story of the attack on Ansar al-Islam's international terrorist training camp has never been told before.
Maj R. Jake Alleman
How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev
Part biography, part historical account of the propaganda fight during World War II, this book follows the efforts of the UK’s top propagandist (Sefton Delmer) as he and his team fought over the airwaves against Goebbels and the Nazis. Readers will struggle alongside the Brits as they learn that it is not appeals to morality or ideals that make effective propaganda, but targeting fears and vulnerabilities. Pomerantsev has recently applied these lessons in his 2019 book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, which includes analysis of Russia's propaganda tactics against Ukraine and its own citizens.
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers by Richard Neustadt and Ernest May
Written during the Cold War, this book reflects on several major historical events (e.g. the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean War, the 1976 health crisis) and how the knowledge—or lack thereof—of history had a major impact on managing each crisis. The key is to apply historical knowledge correctly. While these examples are dated, the concepts are timeless. These include the importance of assessing the historical context for all players; validating key presumptions; recognizing the inertia present in organizations; and cautions against overreliance on historical analogy.
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
Yong has written an approachable introduction to the microbiomes that make up the human body. He presents fascinating tidbits about how we function as organisms, while framing how little we still know about these systems. He also hints at how bioengineering is poised to reshape this world as we know it. The ramifications extend from individualized health plans to highly targeted weaponized viruses.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Every Christmas reading list needs some fiction and this is one of Heinlein's best! This science fiction classic includes political and physical dilemmas of human settlement on the moon. It also includes orbital warfare, artificial intelligence, and the perils of finding oneself on the wrong end of a gravity well from someone with an ax to grind. Not bad for a book written in 1966.
Matt Gallagher
The Ukraine by Artem Chapeye and I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart
Sometimes by design, sometimes by oversight, so many discussions around the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War strip agency from the people most affected by the ruin and destruction being waged upon them. Good literature can help remedy that. Chapeye's fervent dispatches from his own pre-war country reveal how a one-time pacifist became a soldier for Ukraine when Putin's missiles started landing. Pickhart's novel centers on Ukraine's 2013 Maidan social revolution, following a wide cast of everyday people in Kyiv trying to make the best of things under quite difficult circumstances.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The best American novel ever written is a story of two discontented war veterans connecting and trying to make sense of a country they once fought for but no longer understand. If you haven't read it since high school and mostly remember it being about rich jerks partying too much, pick it up again and read it through a veteran's prism.
The Storm Is Here by Luke Mogelson
As the events of January 6, 2020, at the US Capitol become memory-holed by many, this first-hand chronicle of that day by one of America's greatest living war correspondents attains even more relevance. After all, the matter of domestic extremism isn't going away no matter who is in power. Mogelson visited the Air Force Academy in 2023 as the Jannetta Lecture speaker.
For Rouenna by Sigrid Nunez
Perhaps best known for her superb, National-Book-Award-winning novel The Friend, this earlier book by Nunez (published in 2001) captivated me. As much about what it is we owe one another as friends, citizens and human beings as it is about the lifelong trauma carried by a nurse who served in Vietnam, I believe For Rouenna shows a moral, honest way forward for people impacted by the Global War on Terror.
What We Tried to Bury Grows Here by Julian Zabalbeascoa
Set over the course of the Spanish Civil War, and told from the perspectives of civilians, soldiers, priests, kids and revolutionaries, all the superlatives apply to What We Tried to Bury Grows Here: beautiful, haunting, vivid, charged with an assured antifascist creed that manages to never eclipse the story or characters. And the writing! There's a hypnotic quality to it, elegant and subtle in how it brings you into this world and all its many tragedies and struggles.
Gen David Stilwell
Field of Gourds: A Guide to Intellectual Rebellion by Robert Fisher
This is not a mainstream philosophy book, it is a father's instruction to his daughters on the importance of critical thinking. It is the single best document on epistemology (the study of knowledge) that I have come across. The conversation with Fisher's dog Bella takes some getting used to, but it works.