The Chief of Army has followed his US Army counterpart in putting out a reading list. (He didn't select them himself of course - Jeff did it.)
So I'm creating a new meme. Copy the list and mark in bold the ones that you have read. (Take a look - you may be surprised.)
Soldier
Albert Palazzo, Australian Army Campaign Series, No. 1: Battle of Create
Glen Wahlert, Australian Army Campaign Series, No. 2: The Western Desert Campaign
Albert Palazzo, Australian Army Campaign Series, No. 3: Australian Military Operations in Vietnam
Paddy Griffiths, Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to the Near Future
Michael Shaara, The Fallen Angels
John Birmingham, Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1
Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Corporal
Robert A. Hall, Combat Battalion: The Eighth Battalion In Vietnam
Christopher Kolenda, Leadership: The Warrior's Art
Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
Adolph von Schell, Battle Leadership
Peter Ryan, Fear Drive My Feet
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
George Orwell, 1984
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
James Webb, Fields of Fire
Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier
Sergeant
William Slim, Defeat Into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India 1942-1945
Patrick O'Donnell, We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Falujah
Gary McKay, In Good Company: One Man's War in Vietnam
George Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai: The Tale of a Young Tommy in Kitchener's Army, 1914-1918
Les Carylon, Gallipoli
Jo Gullett, Not as Duty Only: An Infantry Man's War
Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
Saul David, Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure
Kim Stanley Robertson, The Years of Rice and Salt
Humphrey Cobb, Paths of Glory
Jean Larteguy, The Centurions
Warrant Officer
Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies, Ancient and Modern
Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Edward de Bono, Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create
A H Nasution, Fundamentals of Guerrilla Warfare and the Indonesian Defence System Past and Future
Antony Beevor: Crete: The Battle and the Resistance
Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
James Jones, The Thin Red Line
Junior Officer
Bernard Callinan, Independent Company: The 2/2nd and 2/4th Australian Independent Companies in Portuguese Timor, 1941-1943
Alan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War 1937-1945
George C. Thorpe, Pure Logistics: The Science of War Preparation
Gwynne Dyer, War: The Lethal Custom
Rick Atkinson, The Long Grey Line: The American Journey of West Point Class of 1966
Philip Caputo , A Rumor of War
Harold G, Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once.. and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Pat Barker, The Regeneration Trilogy
Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey, Seven Days in May
Captain
Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare
James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform
Alice Hills, Future War in Cities: Rethinking a Liberal Dilemma
Michal Howard, War in European History
Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957
Russel Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy
Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam
Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945
Stephen Biddle, Miltary Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle
Williamson Murray and Richard Sinnreich, The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession
Allan Mallinson, The Matthew Hervey Series
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Len Deighton, Bomber
Bernard Cornwall, The Sharpe Books
Major
Carl von Clauswitz, On War
William Shawcross, Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Peter Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Nicolas Fearn, Zeno and the Tortoise: How to Think Like a Philosopher
Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace
Thuclydes, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Mark Hethington, Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq
Phillip Bobbit, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History
David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon
William Gus Pagonis, Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War
Mao Zedong, Guerrilla Warfare
Julius Caesar, The Gallic War
Williamson Murray, Alvin Bernstein and MacGregor Knox, The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Wallace Bream, Eagle in the Snow
Lieutenant Colonel
Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime
Harold R. Winton and David R. Mets, Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918-1941
Victor Davis Hanson, Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think
John A. Lynn, Battle: A history of Combat and Culture
Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
David Galula, Counter Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice
Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War:Innovation and the Modern Military
Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina
Julian Thompson, Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Combat
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
John Masters, Bugles and a Tiger
Senior Officers
Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox, The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050
Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and politics in the Vietnam Era
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
H R MacMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies
Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat
Lewis J. Sorley, Honorable Warrior: Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command
Gary W. Gallagher, Fighting For the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander
David Horner, Supreme Command: General Sir John Wilton and Australia's Asian Wars
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
John Masters, The Field Marshal's Memoirs
So I'm creating a new meme. Copy the list and mark in bold the ones that you have read. (Take a look - you may be surprised.)
Soldier
Albert Palazzo, Australian Army Campaign Series, No. 1: Battle of Create
Glen Wahlert, Australian Army Campaign Series, No. 2: The Western Desert Campaign
Albert Palazzo, Australian Army Campaign Series, No. 3: Australian Military Operations in Vietnam
Paddy Griffiths, Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to the Near Future
Michael Shaara, The Fallen Angels
John Birmingham, Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1
Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Corporal
Robert A. Hall, Combat Battalion: The Eighth Battalion In Vietnam
Christopher Kolenda, Leadership: The Warrior's Art
Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
Adolph von Schell, Battle Leadership
Peter Ryan, Fear Drive My Feet
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
George Orwell, 1984
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
James Webb, Fields of Fire
Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier
Sergeant
William Slim, Defeat Into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India 1942-1945
Patrick O'Donnell, We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Falujah
Gary McKay, In Good Company: One Man's War in Vietnam
George Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai: The Tale of a Young Tommy in Kitchener's Army, 1914-1918
Les Carylon, Gallipoli
Jo Gullett, Not as Duty Only: An Infantry Man's War
Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
Saul David, Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure
Kim Stanley Robertson, The Years of Rice and Salt
Humphrey Cobb, Paths of Glory
Jean Larteguy, The Centurions
Warrant Officer
Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies, Ancient and Modern
Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Edward de Bono, Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create
A H Nasution, Fundamentals of Guerrilla Warfare and the Indonesian Defence System Past and Future
Antony Beevor: Crete: The Battle and the Resistance
Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
James Jones, The Thin Red Line
Junior Officer
Bernard Callinan, Independent Company: The 2/2nd and 2/4th Australian Independent Companies in Portuguese Timor, 1941-1943
Alan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War 1937-1945
George C. Thorpe, Pure Logistics: The Science of War Preparation
Gwynne Dyer, War: The Lethal Custom
Rick Atkinson, The Long Grey Line: The American Journey of West Point Class of 1966
Philip Caputo , A Rumor of War
Harold G, Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once.. and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Pat Barker, The Regeneration Trilogy
Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey, Seven Days in May
Captain
Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare
James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform
Alice Hills, Future War in Cities: Rethinking a Liberal Dilemma
Michal Howard, War in European History
Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957
Russel Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy
Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam
Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945
Stephen Biddle, Miltary Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle
Williamson Murray and Richard Sinnreich, The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession
Allan Mallinson, The Matthew Hervey Series
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Len Deighton, Bomber
Bernard Cornwall, The Sharpe Books
Major
Carl von Clauswitz, On War
William Shawcross, Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Peter Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Nicolas Fearn, Zeno and the Tortoise: How to Think Like a Philosopher
Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace
Thuclydes, The History of the Peloponnesian War
Mark Hethington, Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq
Phillip Bobbit, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History
David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon
William Gus Pagonis, Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War
Mao Zedong, Guerrilla Warfare
Julius Caesar, The Gallic War
Williamson Murray, Alvin Bernstein and MacGregor Knox, The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Wallace Bream, Eagle in the Snow
Lieutenant Colonel
Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime
Harold R. Winton and David R. Mets, Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918-1941
Victor Davis Hanson, Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think
John A. Lynn, Battle: A history of Combat and Culture
Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
David Galula, Counter Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice
Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War:Innovation and the Modern Military
Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina
Julian Thompson, Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Combat
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
John Masters, Bugles and a Tiger
Senior Officers
Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox, The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050
Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and politics in the Vietnam Era
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
H R MacMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies
Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat
Lewis J. Sorley, Honorable Warrior: Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command
Gary W. Gallagher, Fighting For the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander
David Horner, Supreme Command: General Sir John Wilton and Australia's Asian Wars
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
John Masters, The Field Marshal's Memoirs
Comments
I have read:
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
I have no intention of reading 1984 or Catch-22, too depressing.
I'd like to read a few of these, though:
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Bernard Cornwall, The Sharpe Books
I'm surprised that "The Art of War" (Sun Tzu) isn't on the list, though, considering that Machiavelli is.
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
George Orwell, 1984
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (in part)
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five (in part)
Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (in part)
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (in part)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
(There may be more. I didn't scan all that carefully.)
I thought of a couple that probably won't make it onto the list:
Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Schweik
Saul David, Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure sounded fascinating until I looked it up at Amazon: five customer reviews, the most generous with two stars.
Patrick O'Donnell, We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Falujah
Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power
James Corum, Fighting the War on Terror: A Counterinsurgency Strategy
B. P. McCoy, The Passion of Command: the Moral Imperative of Leadership
Fred Anderson and Andrew Clayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime
Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam