The U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List is divided into six categories: Strategic Environment, Regional Studies, History and Military History, Leadership, Army Profession, and Fiction. These sub-lists are intended to steer readers to topics in which they are most interested. Each of these books is suitable for readers of any rank or position.
The books included in this list offer entry points into the many publications available regarding military art and science. They are provided as selected works that can help soldiers, Department of the Army civilians, and anyone interested in the Army to learn more about the Army profession and to sharpen their knowledge of the Army's long and distinguished history, as well as the decisive role played by landpower in conflicts across the centuries.
A sustained personal commitment to critical study of a wide range of readings constitutes an essential responsibility for members of the Army profession. The U.S. Army today confronts extraordinary complexity in the strategic environment with new and emerging missions competing with core war fighting requirements to challenge Army professionals. This reading list is intended to serve as a guide to the many topics worthy of professional consideration, contemplation, and serious discussion.
The appearance of a title on this reading list does not imply that the Chief of Staff endorses the author's views or interpretations. Nevertheless, these books contain thought-provoking ideas and viewpoints relevant to our Army.
STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT
The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder
Peter Zeihan // New York: Twelve Publishing, 2014
Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare
Colin S. Gray // London: Phoenix, 2006
The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force
Eliot A. Cohen // New York: Basic Books, 2016
Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare from Stalingrad to Iraq
Louis A. DiMarco // Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2012
Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
Parag Khanna // New York: Random House, 2016
The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective
Hew Strachan // New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013
The Future Declassified: Megatrends That Will Undo the World Unless We Take Action
Matthew Burrows // New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
The Future of Land Warfare
Michael E. O'Hanlon // Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2015
The Future of Power
Joseph S. Nye Jr. // New York: PublicAffairs, 2011
Great Powers and Geopolitical Change
Jakub J. Grygiel // Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post--Cold War Order
Hal Brands // Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2016
No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn
Charles A. Kupchan // New York: Oxford University Press, 2012
Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
David Kilcullen // New York: Oxford University Press, 2013
Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace
Hans J. Morgenthau // Rev. ed.; Boston: McGrawHill, 2006
The Post-American World: Release 2.0
Fareed Zakaria // New York: W. W. Norton, 2011
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
Paul Kennedy // New York: Random House, 1987
The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World
Ruchir Sharma // New York: W. W. Norton, 2016
Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power
Zbigniew Brzezinski // New York: Basic Books, 2012
Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World
Ian Bremmer // New York: Penguin, 2015
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
John J. Mearsheimer // New York: W. W. Norton, 2001
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
P. W. Singer // New York: Penguin, 2009
The World America Made
Robert Kagan // New York: Knopf, 2012
A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order
Richard Haass // New York: Penguin, 2017
World Order
Henry Kissinger // New York: Penguin, 2014
REGIONAL STUDIES
Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism
David Kilcullen // New York: Oxford University Press, 2016
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Timothy Snyder // New York: Basic Books, 2010
Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe
George Friedman // New York: Anchor Books,
2016
Hirohito's War: The Pacific War, 1941--1945
Francis Pike // London: Bloomsbury, 2015
Milestones
Sayyid Qutb // New Delhi: Islamic Book Service, 2016
Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power
Robert D. Kaplan // New York: Random House, 2010
The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict
Richard N. Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller, eds. // Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung
Mao Zedong // Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1966
Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750
Odd Arne Westad // New York: Basic Books, 2012
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
Christopher Clark // New York: HarperCollins, 2012
Strategy
Aleksandr A. Svechin // Minneapolis, Minn.: East View Information Services, 1992
The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power
Jakub J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell // Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016
War in European History
Michael Howard // New York: Oxford University Press, 2009
HISTORY AND MILITARY HISTORY
1776
David McCullough // New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005
The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783--1900
Robert Wooster // Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009
America's First Battles, 1776--1965
Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft, eds. // Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942--1943
Rick Atkinson // New York: Henry Holt, 2002
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943--1944
New York: Henry Holt, 2007
The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944--1945
New York: Picador, 2013
Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare
Robert M. Citino // Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
Victor Davis Hanson // New York: Doubleday, 2001
Combat Ready? The Eighth U.S. Army on the Eve of the Korean War
Thomas E. Hanson // College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010
Islands, 1942--1945
Ian W. Toll // New York: W. W. Norton, 2015
Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942
Robert M. Citino // Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007
Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917--1945
David E. Johnson // Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013
The First World War
Hew Strachan // New York: Penguin, 2005
The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich
Robert M. Citino // Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005
The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I
Barbara W. Tuchman // New York: Random House, 1962
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared Diamond // New York: W. W. Norton, 1999
History of Rome
Michael Grant // New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978
Inferno: The World at War, 1939--1945
Max Hastings // New York: Knopf, 2011
The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War
Robert B. Strassler, ed. // New York: Touchstone, 1998
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941--1942
Ian W. Toll // New York: W. W. Norton, 2012
The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920--1939
Robert M. Citino // Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2007
The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000
William H. McNeill // Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982
The Regulars: The American Army, 1898--1941
Edward M. Coffman // Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004
A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War
Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh // Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers
Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May // New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988
This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness
T. R. Fehrenbach // New York: Macmillan, 1963
The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943
Robert M. Citino // Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012
LEADERSHIP
American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant
Ronald C. White // New York: Random House, 2016
Study of the Psychological Effects of War
Charles Wilson // New York: Carroll and Graf, 2007
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005
Thomas E. Ricks // New York: Penguin, 2006
The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today
Thomas E. Ricks // New York: Penguin, 2013
The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant
J. F. C. Fuller // New York: Da Capo Press, 1991
George C. Marshall, 4 vols.
Forrest C. Pogue // New York: Viking, 1963--1987
Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century
Alistair Horne // New York: HarperCollins, 2015
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't
Simon Sinek // New York: Penguin, 2014
Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Selected Letters, 1839--1865
Ulysses S. Grant // New York: Library Classics of the United States, 1990
A Message to Garcia
Elbert Hubbard // Lexington, Ky.: Seven Treasures Publication, 2009
A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service
Robert M. Gates // New York: Knopf, 2016
The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks
Joshua Cooper Ramo // New York: Little, Brown, 2016
Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime
Eliot A. Cohen // New York: Free Press, 2002
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
Stanley McChrystal // New York: Penguin, 2015
Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times
Lewis Sorley // New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education
Craig M. Mullaney // New York: Penguin, 2009
William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life
James Lee McDonough // New York: W. W. Norton, 2016
ARMY PROFESSION
The American Way of War
Russell F. Weigley // New York: Macmillan, 1973
The Art of War
Antoine Henri de Jomini // Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971
The Art of War
Sun Tzu, trans. Samuel B. Griffith // New York: Oxford University Press, 1963
Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War
John Ellis // New York: Viking, 1990
The Campaigns of Napoleon: The Mind and Method of History's Greatest Soldier
David G. Chandler // New York: Macmillan, 1966
Civil War Command and Strategy: The Process of Victory and Defeat
Archer Jones // New York: Free Press, 1992
Frederick the Great on the Art of War
Jay Luvaas, ed. // New York: Da Capo Press, 1999
The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War
Donald J. Stoker // New York: Oxford University Press, 2010
History of the U.S. Army
Russell F. Weigley // Rev. ed.: Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984
How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War
Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones // Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991
Infantry in Battle
George C. Marshall, ed. // Washington, D.C.: The Infantry Journal Inc., 1939
Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory
James M. Dubik // Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016
Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
Peter Paret, Gordon A. Craig, and Felix Gilbert, eds. // Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986
Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis
Kenneth N. Waltz // Rev. ed.; New York: Columbia University Press, 2001
Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought
Michael I. Handel // Rev. ed.: New York: Routledge, 2001
On War
Carl von Clausewitz, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret // Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984
Reconsidering the American Way of War: U.S. Military Practice from the Revolution to Afghanistan
Antulio J. Echevarria II // Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2014
Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy
Barry Posen // Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014
The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations
Samuel P. Huntington // Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1957
Some Principles of Maritime Strategy
Julian S. Corbett // Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1988
Strategy: A History
Lawrence Freedman // New York: Oxford University Press, 2013
Strategy: The Indirect Approach
Basil H. Liddell Hart // 3d ed.; London: Faber and Faber, 1954
The Strategy of Conflict
Thomas C. Schelling // Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960
War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province
Jeffrey Race // Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972
War in the Modern World Since 1815
Jeremy Black, ed. // London: Routledge, 2003
FICTION
The Aeneid
Virgil, trans. Robert Fitzgerald // New York: Vintage, 1990
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Stephen Pressfield // New York: Doubleday, 1998
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War
P. W. Singer and August Cole // Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
The Iliad and the Odyssey
Homer, trans. Robert Fagles // New York: Penguin, 1998
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
Karl Marlantes // New York: Grove, 2011
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