The Current Conflict
The decision-making that got us into Afghanistan and Iraq
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq; Thomas E. Ricks
The definitive military chronicle of the Iraq War-and a searing judgment of its gross strategic blindness-drawing on the accounts of senior military officers giving voice to their anger for the first time.
Cobra I: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq; Michael Gordon and Gen. B. E. Trainor
An account of the strategy, the personalities, the actual battles, the diplomacy, the adversaries, and the occupation.
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War; Michael Isikoff and David Corn
Answer the vital questions about how the United States came to invade Iraq.
The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq; George Packer
How the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq.
The conduct of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Imperial Life in the Emerald City:Inside Iraq's Green Zone; Rajiv Chandrasekaran
An intimate portrait of life inside the Oz-like bubble of the Green Zone of Baghdad, which continued unaffected by the growing mayhem outside.
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008; Thomas E. Ricks
Documents the inside story of the Iraq War since late 2005, examining the events that took place as the military was forced to reckon with itself, the surge was launched, and a very different war began.
Observations by Reporters and Other Non-military on the Wars
Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq; Dahr Jamail
An urgent, in-the-trenches report on the dire humanitarian crisis in U.S.-occupied Iraq by a freelance Alaskan journalist.
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict r; Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes
A compelling case that the costs of the war far exceed the $500 billion or so officially spent on it thus far.
The Forever War; Dexter Filkins
A witness to the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Accidental Guerilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One; David Kilcullen
Illuminates both the big global war (the "War on Terrorism") and its relation to the associated "small wars" across the globe: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Chechnya, Pakistan and North Africa.
War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq; Richard Engel.
NBC News's award-winning Middle East Bureau Chief, Richard Engel, offers an unvarnished and often emotional account of five years in Iraq.
2nd Tour, Hope I Don't Die; Peter van Agtmael
From 2006 through 2008, Peter van Agtmael was an embedded photographer who followed the sweep of the conflicts between Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States. He captured the range of the American experience, from chaotic night raids in Iraqi cities to long patrols through isolated valleys in the mountains of Afghanistan
The Places In Between; Rory Stewart
In January 2002, having just spent 16 months walking across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, Stewart began a walk across Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul. Although the Taliban had been ousted several weeks earlier, Stewart was launching a journey through a devastated, unsettled, and unsafe landscape. The recounting of that journey makes for an engrossing, surprising, and often deeply moving portrait of the land and the peoples who inhabit it.
The Good Soldiers; David Finkel
A superb account of the burdens soldiers bear. Aspects of the surge, the author writes, were merely rhetorical. Others were unquestionably successful, particularly the reduction in the number of attacks on Americans—successes to be chalked up to the bravery of the men and women under fire, and in no way, Finkel says, to anything happening in Washington. Says Kauz of one action that serves as an epigram to the entire enterprise, “It’s fucked up. But you did the right thing.”
War; Sebastian Junger
Junger spent 14 months in 2007–2008 intermittently embedded with a platoon of the 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, one of the bloodiest corners of the conflict. The result is an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.
The Experiences of Soldiers on the Ground in South Asia – Soldier’s Narratives
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education; Craig M. Mullaney
A West Point grad, Rhodes Scholar, and Army Ranger recounts his unique education and struggles with the hard lessons that only war can teach.
Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine; Tyler E. Boudreau
The ordeal of a marine officer in battle and then coming home.
Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern War; Mark Bowden
The behind-the-lines story of the U.S. Special Forces team dropped into the middle of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993.
Blood Stripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq s; David J. Danelo
A look at the Marine Corps from the inside out in its struggle with the insurgency in Iraq.
The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq; John Crawford
A young soldier's personal account of the United States' involvement in Iraq.
The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War: A Screaming Eagle in Afghanistan and Iraq ; Brandon Friedman
The memoir of a young infantry officer coming of age in a changing world of war, fighting on the shifting front lines of Afghanistan and Iraq.
One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer; Nathaniel Fick
A former captain in the Marines’ First Recon Battalion, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, reveals how the Corps trains its elite and offers a point-blank account of twenty-first-century battle.
Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldier's Perspective; Paul Rieckhoff
The riveting, action-packed true story of the first soldier to challenge the war in Iraq.
Mass Casualties: Michael Anthony
This searing memoir chronicles the iconic experiences that changed one young soldier forever. A seasoned veteran before the age of twenty-one, he faced the truth about the war—and himself—in this shocking and unprecedented eyewitness account.
History
There are times and ideas in history that have been well-recorded, and which we should study if we want to understand both how to fight the current war and how to move forward to peace, and if possible, to reconciliation.
History of the Middle East
A History of the Arab Peoples; Albert Hourani
The definitive story of Arab civilization,
A History of the Middle East; Peter Mansfield
Follows the historic struggle of the region over the last two hundred years.
History of Islam
What is Islam?: A Comprehensive Introduction: C. Horrie and P. Chippendale
An introduction to this important and complex subject; an independent and sympathetically skeptical account written by a non-religious journalist.
Engaging the Muslim World; Juan Cole
Disentangles the key foreign policy issues that America is grappling with today--from our dependence on Middle East petroleum to the promotion of Islamophobia.
Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan; Robert Kaplan
How the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century.
Taliban; Ahmed Rashid
This book is the only thorough book-length study on the Taliban to date and sets them in the wider context of world politics.
The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror; Bernard Lewis
The historical roots of the resentments that dominate the Islamic world today and that are increasingly being expressed in acts of terrorism.
Diplomatic and Military History
Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam; H. R. McMaster
Analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia.
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam: Barbara Tuchman
Details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance Popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain's George III, and the United States' persistent folly in Vietnam.
The Best and the Brightest; David Halberstam
The defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy.
History of Warfare
The Face of Battle; John Keegan
Military history from the battlefield: a look at the direct experience of individuals at the "point of maximum danger."
Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq; Robert D. Kaplan
Takes the reader through mud and jungle, desert and dirt to the men and women on the ground who are leading the charge against threats to American security.
War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning; Chris Hedges
Veteran New York Times correspondent Hedges argues that, to many people, war provides a purpose for living; it seems to allow the individual to rise above regular life and perhaps participate in a noble cause. Having identified this myth, Hedges then explodes it by showing the brutality of modern war, using examples taken from his own experiences as a war correspondent in Latin America, the Middle East, and the Balkans.
The American Way of War; Eugene Jarecki
From the acclaimed creator of the award-winning documentary Why We Fight comes a deeply thought-provoking and revelatory examination of the deepest roots of American war-making and its troubling implications for the fate of American democracy.
Conduct of Asymmetric War and experiences on the Ground
These are not “how-to” books to be followed slavishly; they are “how it was done” books that contain good lessons.
Malaya
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam; John Nagl
How armies adapt to changing circumstances during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared.
Algeria
Counterinsurgency Warfare; David Galula
Authors approach to "define the laws of counterinsurgency warfare, to deduce from them its principles, and to outline the corresponding strategy and tactics."
A Savage War of Peace; Alistair Horne
Nearly a half century has passed since this savagely fought war ended in Algeria’s independence, and yet its repercussions continue to be felt not only in Algeria and France, but throughout the world.
Vietnam
Street Without Joy; Bernard Fall
In harrowing detail, Fall describes the brutality and frustrations of the Indochina War, the savage eightyear conflict-ending in 1954 after the fall of Dien Bien Phu
A Rumor of War; Philip Caputo
The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago.
Dispatches; Michael Herr
"The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."--John le Carre. By the war correspondent and coauthor of the screenplays for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.
Vietnam: A History; Stanley Karnow
Clarifies, analyzes, and demystifies the tragic ordeal of the Vietnam war; while remaining free of ideological bias, profound in its understanding, and compassionate in its human portrayals,
Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past; Lloyd Gardner & Marilyn Young, editors
Leading historians tease out the connections between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War—and point to the many lessons that went unlearned.
And a Hard Rain Fell; John Ketwig
The unforgettable story of a veteran's rage and the unflinching portrait of a young soldier's odyssey.
On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War; Harry G. Summers
Summer's analysis of America's war in Vietnam addresses the most pressing questions remaining from that terrible conflict, while supporting the tactical approach that was taken there.
A Bright and Shining Lie; Neil Sheehan
Sheehan's tragic biography of John Paul Vann is also a sweeping history of America's seduction, entrapment and disillusionment in Vietnam.
The Army and Vietnam; Andrew Krepinevich
Details the ways in which the U.S. was unprepared to fight a war of counterinsurgency in Vietnam--and why it is likely to remain unprepared to fight any similar war in the near future.
Military publications
FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency Field Manual http://www.usgcoin.org/library/doctrine/COIN-FM3-24.pdf
FM 27-10: Law of Land Warfare http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~nstanton/FM27-10.htm
FM 2-22-3 (FM 34-52) Human Intelligence Collection Operations (Interrogation) http://www.army.mil/institution/armypublicaffairs/pdf/fm2-22-3.pdf
Serving Military and Veterans’ Issues
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society; LTC Dave Grossman
By conditioning soldiers to overcome their instinctive loathing of killing, we have drastically increased post-combat stress.
On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace; LTC Dave Grossman
What it takes to perform, cope and survive in the toxicity of deadly combat as a soldier in a foreign land, and a police officer in the mean streets of urban America.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character; Jonathan Shay
Examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer's Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming; Jonathan Shay
Illuminates the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life.
War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder; Edward Tick
Teaches how truly to heal war trauma in veterans, their families, and our communities.
The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans; Aaron Glantz
Systematically documents the U.S. government's neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Vets Under Siege: How America Deceives and Dishonors Those Who Fight Our Battles; Martin Schram
Exposes a shocking culture of antagonism toward veterans by the very agency- the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)- that was formed to serve them.
When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind; S. Bannerman
Shows that the most passionate activism against this war is not on college campuses but in the households of those with the most at stake, the primarily blue-collar military families.
Down Range: To Iraq and Back; Bridget C. Cantrell
An information and resource manual for both returning troops and their loved ones with answers, explanations, and insights as to why so many combat veterans suffer from flashbacks, depression, fits of rage, nightmares, anxiety, emotional numbing, and other troubling aspects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Moving a Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops; Ilona Meagher
A grassroots call to action designed to break the shameful silence and put the issue of PTSD in our returning troops front and center before the American public.
Veterans' Families' Narratives and Biographies
In Harm's Way: The Returning Veteran; Jane Smith Thornton
Partly a memoir and partly a primer on fighting your way through the system.
I'm Staying With My Boys: The heroic life of Sgt. John Basilone, USMC; Jim Proser with Jerry Cutter
A first-hand look inside the life of one of the greatest heroes of the Greatest Generation.
"Real" War Fiction
The Things They Carried; Tim O'Brien
Neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three, yielding a work of fiction that is remarkable for its depiction of the realities of the Vietnam war at its most basic level.
The Second Tour;Terry P. Rizzuti
Tells the story of Vietnam in fragmented, non-sequential visions from the perspective of Rootie, a low-level marine. He describes how he and his friends survived, how they lived, and how they died—although not necessarily in that order. By also giving readers brief glimpses of his life after Vietnam, he allows them to see the impact that serving in Vietnam has had on his life.