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I used to have a lot more time for non CS reading and actually made an Amazon list on this topic back in 2005:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/2INJSM38...

1. On War (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) by Carl Von Clausewitz

2. Leadership: The Warrior's Art by Barry R. McCaffrey

3. Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach by Dandridge M. Malone

4. The Defense of Hill 781: An Allegory of Modern Mechanized Combat by James R. McDonough

5. The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-Warfare Theory and AirLand Battle by Robert Leonhard

6. Strategy: Second Revised Edition (Meridian) by B. H. Liddell Hart

7. The Art of War by Niccolò Machiavelli

8. Hagakure: The Book of the Samauri by Tsunetomo Yamamoto

9. The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

10. The Art of War (Shambhala classics) by Sun Tzu

11. The Prince (Bantam Classics) by Niccolo Machiavelli

12. Evolutionary Game Theory by Jörgen W. Weibull

13. On Guerrilla Warfare by Mao Tse-tung

14. The History of the Peloponnesian War: Revised Edition (Penguin Classics) by Thucydides

15. The Histories (Penguin Classics) by Herodotus

16. The Persian Expedition (Penguin Classics) by Xenophon

17. Plutarch: Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans (Modern Library Series, Vol. 1) by Plutarch

18. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 2 (Modern Library Classics) by Plutarch

19. Livy: The Early History of Rome, Books I-V (Penguin Classics) (Bks. 1-5) by Titus Livy

20. The History of Rome from Its Foundation, Books XXI-XXX: The War with Hannibal (Penguin Classics) (Bks. 21-30) by Titus Livius Livy



hey.quite a bit of this is online at sonshi.com, in the library section ( or used to be..haven't been there for some time now )


+1 for #6. It's a great read. It would be fun to teach a high school history class around it.


Have you read all of these?


Commentary on The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar


To those, I would add this:

MODERN WARFARE

A French View of Counterinsurgency by Roger Trinquier


Along these lines get "The Battle of Algiers" on netflix. When Iraq started going badly they actually had a huge screening in the pentagon.


Too bad that the tactics that served the French so well in Algiers can not be applied in Iraq.


They "served" the French for a while, as they might serve the US in Iraq... for a while that is. But remember that just when the French thought they'd suppressed Algerian resistance, it erupted violently and the result was a long and extremely bloody civil war.




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