U.S. Army Engineer School Commandant’s Reading List

(source) I hope every member of the Army Engineer Profession – Soldier and Civilian – will find reading these books to be as beneficial as I have throughout my career. Life-long learning is a major goal of today’s Army. Learning through other’s experience is a very efficient way to achieve wisdom far beyond our experience levels. It is a truism that “…if you want a new idea, start by reading an old book….” A directed reading and writing program in our units and sections will help us develop our critical thinking and increase our base of knowledge by learning through others’ experiences.

This revision was published October 2012.

All Ranks and Grades

Book cover for Breaching Fortress Europe/the Story of U.S. Engineers in Normandy on D-Day/Book and Maps

Book cover for Builders And Fighters: U.S. Army Engineers in World War II

Book cover for Existential Pleasures of Engineering

Book cover for Face of Battle

Book cover for The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Book cover for Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror

Book cover for Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command

Book cover for Understanding Terror Networks

Book cover for History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, The

Enlisted, Pre-Commissioned Officers, and GS 1-11

Book cover for Attacks

Book cover for Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest

Book cover for Captains Courageous

Book cover for Eastern Approaches

Book cover for To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

Book cover for The Heights of Courage: A Tank Leader's War On the Golan

Book cover for Infantry in Battle

Book cover for A Message to Garcia

Book cover for Private Yankee Doodle: Being a Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier

Book cover for The G.I. Journal of Sergeant Giles

Non-Commission Officers, Company-Grade Officers, Warrant Officers, and GS-12/13

Book cover for After Desert Storm: The U.S. Army and the Reconstruction of Kuwait

Book cover for Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II

Book cover for Common Sense Training: A Working Philosophy for Leaders

Book cover for Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice

Book cover for The Damned Engineers.

Book cover for Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization

Book cover for The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO's Contribution to Warfare

Book cover for The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization

Book cover for Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach

Book cover for Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design

Book cover for Vietnam Studies: U.S. Army Engineers 1965-1970

Book cover for The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Book cover for The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War

Senior Non-Commissioned Officers, Field Grade Officers/Warrant Officers, and GS 14/15

Book cover for The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Book cover for The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within

Book cover for Technical Services, The Corps of Engineers, The War Against Japan

Book cover for East of Chosin: Entrapment and Breakout in Korea, 1950

Book cover for The Echo of Battle: The Army's Way of War

Book cover for Engineers at War

Book cover for The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916

Book cover for Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America

Book cover for A Savage War of Peace, Part 2: Algeria 1954-1962

Book cover for Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton

Book cover for Vietnam Studies: Base Development 1965-1970

Senior Command Sergeants Major, Senior Colonels, General Officers, Chief Warrant Officer 5s, and General Officers and Senior Executive Service

Book cover for Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

Book cover for The Best and the Brightest

Book cover for The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Book cover for Engineering Security: The Corps of Engineers and Third System Defense Policy, 1815-1861

Book cover for Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

Book cover for The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire

Book cover for The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third

Book cover for The History of the Peloponnesian War

Book cover for Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Book cover for Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Book cover for Washington's Crossing