Commander Luis Perales, Spanish Navy Reserve
One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander by Royal Navy Admiral Sandy Woodward. It has all the components of modern naval warfare: naval, air, and land operations. There are new ingredients, such as unmanned systems and cyber operations. But there is still much to learn from the Falklands War.
Lieutenant Commander Brandon Beckler, U.S. Navy
The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King by Walter R. Borneman. In learning about the lives and careers of the four men who rose to the rank of fleet admiral, we see how different experiences, personalities, and skills combined to win the most complex maritime war in history.
Colonel Brian P. Huysman, U.S. Marine Corps
The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, edited by Robert B. Strassler. Fear, honor, and interest—motives as true today as in 431 BCE. War at sea and on land, economic and resource competition, allies and partners. This is a foundational study for all officers and senior enlisted of the first documented great power war.
Lieutenant Commander Jackie Gravell, U.S. Navy (Retired)
The 2017 book Soldiers and Civilization: How the Profession of Arms Thought and Fought the Modern World Into Existence by Reed Robert Bonadonna. The author describes elements of military professionalism in terms of history, sociology, weapons, tactics, and strategy, and how this professionalism affects society. It provides valuable insights into how different cultures approach warfare.
Alan Jaroslovsky, U.S. Navy Veteran
Captain Tameichi Hara’s book, Japanese Destroyer Captain: Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway—The Great Naval Battles as Seen through Japanese Eyes, originally published in 1961. It contains lessons in leadership, tactics, devotion, sacrifice, and grace—a manual for destroyer sailors of all nations at all times.
Don Chappell, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran
The modern classic War: Ends and Means by Paul Seabury and Angelo Codevilla is a hidden gem. This erudite but accessible discussion of how wars start, are fought, and, most important, how they are ended is far more germane now than when first published in 1989 (a revised edition was published in 2006). It is especially suitable for officers at the rank of O-5 and above.
Captain Larry Dove, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy by Craig Whitlock. It should be in the CNO’s reading library and taught in all Navy schools, from boot camp to flag officer indoctrination courses. It is a cautionary tale about many years of ethical lapses, criminality, and leadership failures in the Pacific Fleet.
Lieutenant Anna Kang, U.S. Navy
Following the release of the Department of Defense’s 2024 Arctic Strategy, Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan’s Red Arctic: Russian Strategy Under Putin explains what is driving Russia and how the Arctic’s significance has evolved through its Arctic strategy.
Lieutenant Colonel Eric Udouj, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
David L. Preston’s Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution. The causes and consequences of British General Edward Braddock’s loss in this 1755 battle are debated to this day. Too often turning points in our own history are not thoroughly explored. This book sheds light both on Braddock and the political conditions under which he commanded and shows how the French and Indian coalition achieved victory.
Lieutenant Commander Paul H. Case, U.S. Navy (Retired)
The obvious answers are The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk or The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna. Having just read a biography of McKenna, I can understand many would choose The Sand Pebbles. However, I choose The Caine Mutiny—the original book, which follows the career of Willie Keith from induction as an officer to the end of his naval career with his mentors, both good and bad.
Michael Romero, Social Studies Teacher, Menchville High School
Tim McGrath’s Give Me a Fast Ship describing the Revolutionary War’s Continental Navy and/or Michael Palmer’s Stoddert’s War describing the Quasi-War with France in the 1790s. Both tell founding stories of U.S. naval history and illustrate the exploits of sailors and leaders still celebrated today.
Captain Charles Fitzpatrick, U.S. Air Force (Retired)
C. S. Forester’s 1936 novel The General, about the British Army dealing with trench warfare in World War I. The novel depicts what happens when military leaders are slow to realize and accept that new technology has made established tactics obsolete. This may be occuring today with drones instead of machine guns.
Commander Mark Metcalf, U.S. Navy (Retired)
I nominate Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations by Zheng Wang. It explains the Chinese Communist Party’s “National Humiliation Narrative,” which undergirds China’s view of the world and is the raison d’etre for its strategic decision making. Ignore it at your own risk!
Colonel Chris Goff, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Craig Whitlock’s new book, Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked and Seduced the U.S. Navy . In an age where so many have willingly diluted the moral basis for their ethics, the military services need some stark reminders of what not to do.
Neil F. Keehn
The 7th Dawn by Michael Keon about the struggles against colonialism after World War II. The movie version came out in 1963, and if our national leaders had seen the movie or read the book back then, it is unlikely the Vietnam War would have developed into the mess that it became.
Only when the top decision-makers understand Clausewitz’s strategic center of gravity will the United States successfully prosecute such national security situations.
A. D. Baker III, Former editor/compiler of Combat Fleets
The most useful book from the Naval Institute Press for Navy users would be a new edition of Combat Fleets of the World, which has not been updated since 2014. Reviews credited Combat Fleets as the best of several books of its type, and its cost was considerably lower than what the Navy now spends on two copies of Jane’s Fighting Ships each year—more than $2,000 a copy for each ship plus numerous other copies for the Pentagon, etc.
Frank Lang
When the political system is collapsing and there is chaos on the battlefield, General James Mattis suggests the Guy Sager story, The Forgotten Soldier. Sager was a draftee into the Wehrmacht who relied on prayer, family memories, and his military training to survive the apocalypse of 1945 Germany.
Commander Leroy Williams, U.S. Navy (Retired)
I would always recommend the 1955 novel HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean. It shows exceptional leadership under terrible wartime conditions, escorting a convoy to Murmansk during World War II.
Theodore Kuhlmeier, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran
The Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester. Though fiction, Forester provides a blueprint for how to lead and treat your men. The long war between Great Britain and Napoleon was a brutal affair, especially at sea for the Royal Navy. Hornblower humanely melds and leads men, some pressed into the Navy, into an efficient fighting unit. Hornblower has his real life models in Horatio Nelson, Philip Broke, and Murray Maxwell.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas Harris, U.S. Navy
Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality by Henry Cloud. This book solidified for me what it means to have integrity—and not just basic right-and-wrong stuff we already know. If I could retitle it, I would call it Character: Embracing the Red to Deliver Competency.
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart A. Rodriguez, U.S. Air Force Reserve (Retired)
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, translated by Samuel B. Griffith. It provides the foundation for China’s current actions. From sowing discord via social media to militarizing atolls to relentless spying activities, Sun Tzu’s teachings describe China’s methods to destroy U.S. hegemony.
Chief Petty Officer John M. Duffy, U.S. Navy (Retired)
The Good Shepherd (1955) by C.S. Forester and The Cruel Sea (1951) by Nicholas Monsarrat
for their realistic portrayals of leadership during combat at sea throughout the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II.
Dave Kisor, U.S. Navy Veteran
Robert A. Heinlein’s 1953 story collection Revolt in 2100, which includes the novella If This Goes On—. It is the story of how a U.S. theocracy was overthrown. He saw this fomenting in 1939, but nobody believed it could happen here. I first read it in 1976 and was entertained, but in 2002 it scared the hell out of me.
Captain John W. Tokarewich, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Sea Wolf by William B. Breuer. Boldness is discussed and stressed far too little within today’s officer ranks. Breuer’s biography of Vice Admiral John D. Bulkeley provides ample evidence that bold action not only provides inspiration, but plays a major role in winning battles and wars, whether hot or cold.
Stephen S. Weaver, U.S. Merchant Marine Veteran
Panzer Commander: The Memoirs of Colonel Hans von Luck. This officer’s professional military excellence is never in question. He addresses instead, “What will be my comportment in tactical and strategic loss, dysfunctional politics, and the destruction of my nation?” That he succeeds in postwar Europe after a horrific Soviet incarceration is never in question.
Chief Petty Officer Allan J. Miller, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, former Navy SEAL officers, would be an outstanding addition to the professional reading library and list. It is a simple nuts-and-bolts approach to accountability and leadership and a practical resource for both military personnel and civilians.
Rear Admiral Fred L. Ames, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)
Intrusive Leadership: How to Become That Leader by Coast Guard Captain Marcus Canady. This leadership book is solely dedicated to defining, dissecting, and discussing a leadership style with immeasurable impact and was highlighted in the April 2024 Proceedings article “Intrusive Leadership Saved the Life Closest to Me.”
Captain Jim Davis, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Combat at Close Quarters is an illustrated history of the Navy in Vietnam. The lesson for any Chief of Naval Operations and Commandant is that as honorable and courageous the service personnel were, they were fighting with one hand tied behind their back by the civilian decision makers.
Captain Philip A. O'Brien, U.S. Air Force (Retired)
Samuel Eliot Morison’s Strategy and Compromise is a study of how military and naval staffs interacted in World War II to produce not just winning plans, but vitally needed understandings among allies for the peace to follow.
Captain Stephen B. Sloane, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Gold Stripe on a Jackass: The Quest for Moral Efficiency. A review by Lawrence Korb, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense, notes: “Stephen Sloane puts his many years of military experience under the microscope of a scholar's intellect to pin down the essence of an ideal morality- a morality that transcends ubiquitous societal, political, and organizational constraints. . . . Sloane shows us why we need to redefine our concepts of leadership to include the consideration of questioning authority by speaking truth to power.”
Guy Wroble
I was stunned to find no books by Chinese authors on the reading lists. In particular, The Art of War by Sun Tzu. How can anyone hope to defeat an adversary if they do not know the thought processes of the foe they may face?
