Ask HN: good books about military strategy?

[Tichy]

The only books in that vein I know are "The Art Of War" by Sun Tzu and Clausewitz' "Vom Kriege". I suspect german book shops don't tend to stock as many books on war as some other countries (I remember seeing the "military" section of a bookstore for the first time in London).

Anyway, I would be interested in more detailed stuff, like how to use tanks, planes and so on. Maybe analysis of historical battles would be good, too.

I guess it won't help with a startup, but for some reason I have wondered about this (maybe for strategy game development...).

[pskomoroch]

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

[lani]

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 )

[mmmurf]

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

[yters]

Have you read all of these?

[mnemonicsloth]

Commentary on The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar

[newt0311]

To those, I would add this:

MODERN WARFARE

A French View of Counterinsurgency by Roger Trinquier

[lionhearted]

A quick read is Wikipedia's summary of Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings" - it's about Japanese swordsmanship in the early 1600's in a variety of situations: Full-on combat, a duel, outnumbered, with high/low ground, etc. It's strategic more than tactical, and if you like Sun Tzu you might dig it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings

The story of his life, "Musashi," is one of my favorite books of all time and has good strategic and philosophical discussion mixed in with some really riveting action and social commentary. Musashi had a lot of potential at a young age, but was extremely undisciplined and constantly had it out with the law, society, and people whose motivations he couldn't understand. The book chronicles him becoming the greatest swordsman in Japanese history. An incredible read, especially for anyone who was bright at young age but questioned a hell of a lot of society's rules.

Amazon (no affiliate B.S., just a great book): http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Eiji-Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572

[prakash]

The book of 5 rings is a nice book. Here's another: Arthashastra by Chāṇakya has some chapters on war - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthashastra

[Agathos]

Martin van Creveld writes some serious analysis. Consider...

Supplying War -- on logistics (as in "professionals study...")

Command in War -- on communication, information, and the importance of local autonomy leading to quick action

The Transformation of War -- has strategy's biggest buzzword right there in the title, but this was written back in 1991. On the growing role of low-intensity and asymmetric conflicts.

His books tend to be short, but very dense.

[rudyfink]

The first book I checked to make sure was included in this tread was "Supplying War". There are many standard texts on conflict, but that one somehow misses many lists. I think the examination of conflicts from the point of view of logistics serves two very good purposes: it's an essential education in making sure a force is supplied and it's a good perspective of looking at a conflict as a long term temporal and spacial endeavor.

"Command in War" is also quite good, and I have not yet read "Transformation in War".

[mechanical_fish]

I read some interviews with van Creveld a few years ago. The guy sounded very smart.

I keep meaning to look up his books in a good library but I got distracted. Thanks for the reminder!

[bjelkeman-again]

My absolute favourite in this class of books is:

Infantry attacks, Erwin Rommel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_Attacks

Don't let the word "Infantry" in the title fool you. It is an engrossing account on how to use armed forces to your advantage. He supposedly was working on "The Tank in Attack", but never made it that far. A good substitute is The Rommel Papers, which was published posthumously by his family.

The Rommel Papers http://books.google.com/books?id=JE8VFsdxNGgC

[chwolfe]

Patton - "Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!"

[pg]

Along with the Anabasis and Caesar's Gallic Wars, I particularly recommend Johnnie Johnson's Wing Leader, Hanson's Western Way of War, and Oman's Art of War in the Middle Ages.

[icey]

"Warfighting", hands down:

http://www.amazon.com/Warfighting-U-Marine-Corps-Staff/dp/96...

It won't teach you how to drive tanks and lob grenades, but it is one of the best military strategy books I've read.

If you just want the PDF, it's freely available here:

http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/mcdp1.pdf

[fiaz]

My favorite (copied from Wikipedia):

The Unfettered Mind (Japanese: 不動智神妙録 Fudōchi Shinmyōroku) is a three-part treatise on Buddhist philosophy and martial arts written by Takuan Soho, a Japanese monk of the Rinzai sect. The title translates roughly to "The Mysterious Records of Immovable Wisdom". The treatise was written as correspondence to Yagyū Munenori, inheritor to the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū school of swordsmanship. Written for the laity, the book makes little use of Buddhist terminology, but instead focuses on describing situations followed by an interpretation. Its contents make an effort to apply Zen Buddhism to martial arts.

Available in PDF form here:

http://www.daikonforge.com/downloads/TheUnfetteredMind.pdf

[iron_ball]

Takuan Soho is also the one who brought enlightenment to Musashi, according to the stories (much about Musashi is fictionalized).

He also has a pickled daikon named after him.

[parzival52]

The best I have read is by B.H. Liddell Hart:

http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Meridian-B-Liddell-Hart/dp/04...

He also wrote respected volumes on the world wars and biographies of Rommel and Scipio Africanus, among others.

[fdschoeneman]

Liddell Hart is good, though sometimes he reads like he's giving his subject a reach around when writing about him.

[vaksel]

You can try downloading some of the army manuals that you can find on the net. I know there are some for the soldier level, so there is probably some for the general level too.

Then you can go back and try finding books written by generals or about them. i.e. I figure something written about Patton would have tank tactics there too.

[notaddicted]

Have you read Clausewitz On War? That was one of my favorite books last year.

This is more general than you are looking for and it stops a bit short of air war but it helped me to put historical events into a global context.

The outline of history; being a plain history of life and mankind. Rev. and brought up to date by Raymond Postgate and G.P. Wells. With maps and plans by J.F. Horrabin.

Wells, H. G. 1866-1946. (Herbert George), Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday 1971, Book. 1103p., D21 .W4 1971

I'd say definitely search for books written about Iraq and Afghanistan, that should give you some information about current strategies.

[niels_olson]

If you want to understand the context behind all other books on military strategy written since Clausewitz (any book written in the last hundred years), you must read Clausewitz. If you want to understand why the US Army was so dead set on failing to anticipate the next war and continued to train for symmetric war until very recently, you must read Clausewitz. If you want to understand why the new Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual written by General Petraeus, Lt General Amos, and Lt Colonel Nagl is so celebrated, you must read Clausewitz.

You should also read Petraeus et al's Counterinsurgency Field Manual. The difference in tone and scope is staggering. If you want to understand military strategy going forward, you must understand Petraeus's book. I assure you, it is on the nightstand of the President and every military officer (and not because it says that on the cover, but because I'm one of them).

If you are running a startup, read the Petraeus book as though you are the insurgent. If you are at MSFT or Google, read it as though you are in the US Army.

[barry-cotter]

The author said he'd read Vom Kriege, which is Clausewitz's "On War"

[byrneseyeview]

http://www.amazon.com/War-Nerd-Soft-Skull-Press/dp/097966368...

Certainly not dry. I can't vouch for his accuracy, but he knows a lot and could point you to some interesting battles/periods to study.

[smanek]

I like the Defense News periodical, and have heard good things about Jane's Defence Weekly.

There are a lot of Field manuals available (e.g., see http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...), but those are (in my experience) more about tactics than strategy.

[fdschoeneman]

I highly recommend John Boyd. His presentations are a bit dense, but you might try reading the biography of him written by Robert Coram first.

[celoyd]

"Dense" is generous; you could go as far as "unrigorously terse". Sometimes they just don't make sense. But he got results.

A good collection of his presentations is at http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/john-r-boyd/ and there's low-quality video of his "Conceptual Spiral" on YouTube.

[rodrigo]

I found Boyd via Greene, check him on the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)

[benzim]

I can't think of any books, but you can find good descriptions of strategy used in famous battles on wikipedia. Some interesting battles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ilipa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia

[bdr]

This one kept me up one night: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae -- and I almost never read history/military books.

[geirfreysson]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Black Swan" had some pretty good insights into the "unknown unknowns" of military combat.

http://www.wajapi.com/books/80

[hedgehog]

"The Art Of War" is great, I read this version when I was 13 but I would still recommend it as a good place to start before getting another translation or other books:

"Sunzi Speaks: The Art of War"

Tsai Chih Chung

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385472587

Some online reading that you might find interesting:

http://www.ingber.com/combat97_cmi.ps.gz

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Symposia/joint2008/papers/Hoffman%20...

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Symposia/joint2008/papers/Warden%20P...

http://www.dodccrp.org/files/Smith_Complexity.pdf

[sam242]

Hmmm, guess no-one here is in the military? The (American) military branches all publish their own reading lists, updated annually, that'd be a great starting point. http://www.af.mil/library/csafreading/ http://www.history.army.mil/reference/csalist/csalist.htm and the National Defense University has a big compilation: http://www.ndu.edu/library/readinglist/PMReadingList.html

[RobGR]

A lot of the suggestions here seem to follow the philosophical advice from generals meme, like the people who read Sun Tzu to learn how to better manage their sales team and etc.

The best book I know of in the "detailed stuff, like how to use tanks, planes and so on" area is James F. Dunigan's "How to Make War". It's a little cold-war oriented but still pretty applicable, and the first chapter is helpfully titled "How to Become an Effective Armchair General". Given that wars are usually massive economic and logistical operations, it has a lot of charts and tables to that effect, showing the number of shots per soldier killed over the centuries, tonnage of explosives per plane, etc.

Just by glancing over the charts you can see the basic history of military activity -- the Civil War being the first "modern" war in terms of slaughter, economic mobolization, and etc; then a period of regression to small wars, before WWI and so on.

As far as "how to use tanks" and so on, that is often considered tactics not strategy. There are books written on that stuff, however; how many people should be in a small platoon and how they should move, leapfrogging each other so one moves while the other keeps the enemy ducking; how two tanks can use their light machine guns to clear each other's close-in areas that they can't see or shoot at themselves; the strategy of having a tank attached to a platoon of infantry so they work together; etc.

But I don't know of one single book that collects all that. If I had to find them I would probably look at the some of the publications of the Army War College, and I would go to a gun show and find that guy who is always there with a lot of field manual publications, and ask him.

[rodrigo]

You can google the field manuals (FM) of the US Army and Marine, they range from operation of guns and marksmanship to strategy, to leadership. All great reads.

[raphar]

I found all these US Army manuals in the emule network. They still must be there. One very good manual to have is the Seal fitness training one (if you are into this).

[jaspertheghost]

I would recommend: 1) The Art of War by Niccolò Machiavelli (read by Napoleon) 2) Certain to Win by Chet Richards (talks about OODA loop by John Boyd)

[nivi]

I second "Certain to Win".

Game theorists might define a strategy as an approach to optimal decision-making while you are surrounded by other actors whose actions interact with yours. Chess strategies are a good example.

The author of Certain to Win, Chet Richards, takes a different approach. He defines strategy as "a scheme for creating and managing plans." It is a means to generate, act upon, and discard plans. Strategy is how you "plan to plan." OODA loops are a good example of this approach.