Recommended Reading

It must be a month or more since I've posted a reading list on a national security topic. Here is a great list, and I'd say it even if my books weren't on it. I've read most of the works recommended here. Anyone preparing to appear before the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee might considering checking out this list. 

pushlama/istock

A young acquaintance of mine due to report to the Army's military intelligence school later this year asked for some reading recommendations to prepare for the classes. Having no idea, I asked some knowledgeable friends. Here are their picks:

Army Reserve Maj. Kyle Teamey, a counterinsurgency expert:

If this is a brand new lieutenant with no previous service experience, he/she should focus first on learning the basics of soldiering, tactics, and leadership .... [and] start with the same books a young infantry or armor officer might read:

• The Defense of Duffer's Drift, Swinton (and the various knock-offs)
• Once an Eagle, Myrer
• The Bear Went Over the Mountain and/or The Other Side of the Mountain, Grau and Jalali
• Infantry Attacks, Rommel

Retired Army Col. John Collins, who enlisted as a private in 1942, served in three wars, and also is author of Military Geography and Military Strategy :

My top candidate is Sherman Kent's classic, a golden oldie titled Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy."

Carson Morris, a career intelligence officer:

Kent's is very good; hence naming the school after him. I would add:

1. Roger George & Jim Bruce's Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations
2. Col. John Hughes-Wilson's MI Blunders and Cover-ups
3. The Army's Recce and Surveillance Handbook
4. Abe Shulsky & Gary Schmitt's Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, latest (think is 3rd) edition
5. Allen Dulles' The Craft of Intelligence
6. John Keegan's Intelligence in War
7. Steve O'Hern's Intelligence Wars: Lessons from Baghdad

Retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, author of The Sling and the Stone:

Stuart Herrington's Silence Was a Weapon. Amazon has it used for under $10. Obviously good for COIN. For conventional tactical, the Marine Corps republished a small manual called ‘Intelligence for Frontline Units.' Not sure where he can get that one."

Lani Elliott, teaches at the National Defense Intelligence College:

Sandler, Todd, et. al., 'Terrorist Signalling and the Value of Intelligence' (British Journal of Political Science, October 2007), Brian Dunmire's recent article from Military Intelligence, ‘Army Strategic Intelligence,' and Don Hanle's Terrorism: The Newest Face of War, would be my recommendations. The Dunmire article is very helpful on the career field itself and some key issues strategic intelligence faces, especially in the Army. Insightful and informed. Hanle's book provides the most immediately applicable and functional method of analyzing terrorism that I know about. The book is especially valuable when read with T.X. Hammes' The Sling and The Stone."

James Hailer, founder, Hailer Publishing, a specialty house for military classics:

Compton McKenzies' Water on the Brain. a comedy/satire written about rivalry between competing intelligence agencies in England in 1933. It was based on MacKenzies' experience as a MI6 agent during WWI and was his revenge for being prosecuted under the official secrets act for trying to publish his memoir of the war in 1932. He nails the war between bureaucracies better than anyone I have read, and it is one of the few books that I have consistently laughed out loud as I read it. Frankly it should be required reading for any person in a large organization."

Lin Todd, a specialist in counterterrorism in the Middle East:

Richards Heuer's ‘Psychology of Intelligence Analysis' is a classic primer on analysis of intel of all sorts. In addition, Front Line Intelligence by COL Robert Robb and LTC Stedman Chandler, which is an S2 AAR of intelligence from WWII, might be useful."

Shawn Brimley, one of the brains behind the QDR:

Three additional books that have influenced my thinking on this issue are:

1. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy -- by Mark Lowenthal
2. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning - by Cynthia Grabo
3. Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning -- by Richard Betts."

What would you suggest adding to this list?

RocketRacoon/Flickr

I asked my old friend Quang X. Pham, who left Vietnam as a refugee, then became a Marine pilot and later a successful executive and author, and who may run for Congress soon, for suggestions on a reading list about the Vietnam War. This is an unusual list. I've only read two of his selections. I actually bought one of those, Sorrows of War, on a streetcorner in Hanoi, along with some bootlegs of Tom Waits CDs. Me: "Why do you have the complete works of Tom Waits for sale?"

Saleslady: "Tom Waits is very, very popular in Hanoi!" (Of course.)

By the time we landed back in the US of A, I'd finished the book, which was memorable.

Take it away, Quang:

• In the Jaws of History, Bui Diem, South Vietnam's ambassador to the U.S. reflects on the diplomacy of the war

• Buddha's Child, Nguyen Cao Ky, South Vietnam's flamboyant Air Marshal/Vice President's second memoir

• The Twenty-Five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon, Lam Quang Thi

• Counterpart: A South Vietnamese Navy Officer's War, Kiem Do

• Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War, James H. Willbanks

• A Gift of Barbed Wire: America's Allies Abandoned in South Vietnam, Robert S. McKelvey, a Marine veteran of Vietnam who became a psychiatrist, interviews former detainees.

• Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN, Andrew Wiest (If you think the Americans did all the fighting and the U.S. Marines took Hue City, then read this 2007 book.)

• The Sorrows of War, Bao Ninh, fiction, a former North Vietnamese soldier writes about his experience in the American War
  

• A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, a Vietnam vet writes first person accounts of Vietnamese refugees in New Orleans

• Fortunate Son, Lewis Puller, Jr., Pulitzer Prize winner for biography, the only son of the most famous Marine recalls the Vietnam War and its aftermath

Test on Tuesday.

melvdesigns/flickr

It must be almost two weeks since I posted a military history reading list. I apologize for the delay. Here is a compilation I came across by Army Col. Bob Cassidy, author of Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War. The highlight in each section denotes an essential pick in that category. It is idiosyncratic, but so are we all. I have read almost every book here, and I don't see a bad pick in the bunch. The only worries I have are V.D. Hanson, who seems to me to be a bit of a blowhard (see John Lynn's devastating critique of his work), and the Churchill selection -- I love him, and have read almost everything by him, but I've never been able to finish The River War.

For those who finish the list, test is on Monday.

WARRIOR ETHOS, WAR, AND STRATEGY

GATES OF FIRE, STEPHEN PRESSFIELD

ONCE AN EAGLE, ANTON MYRER

WARRIOR POLITICS, ROBERT KAPLAN

PROFESSION OF ARMS, SIR JOHN WINTHROP HACKETT

THE SOLDIER AND THE STATE, SAMUEL J. HUNTINGTON

STARSHIP TROOPERS, ROBERT HEINLEIN

THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR, RUSSELL F. WEIGLEY

A HISTORY OF WARFARE, JOHN KEEGAN

WAR IN EUROPEAN HISTORY, MICHAEL HOWARD

ART OF WAR, SUN TZU

STRATEGY, B.H. LIDDELL HART

AMERICA'S FIRST BATTLES, CHARLES E. HELLER AND WILLIAM A. STOFT

DIPLOMACY, HENRY KISSINGER

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES, PHILIP BOBBITT