The U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List

(source) The readings provide a useful course of independent study in the origin of the profession of arms, valuable leadership techniques, and the use of our critical-thinking abilities to understand the world around us. Taken together, these readings will help Soldiers or Army civilians sharpen their intellects while preparing for their next level of responsibility. The books also complement materials currently used in the Army educational system and can help bridge the intervals between periods of formal instruction at Army schools. While intended for independent study, one could also use the list as the basis for establishing book clubs, discussion groups, and other professional development activities

This revision was published May 2017.

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The Strategic Environment

Book cover for The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder

Book cover for Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare

Book cover for The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force

Book cover for Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare From Stalingrad to Iraq (Military History)

Book cover for Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

Book cover for The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective

Book cover for The Future of Land Warfare (Geopolitics in the 21st Century)

Book cover for The Future of Power

Book cover for Great Powers and Geopolitical Change

Book cover for Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order

Book cover for No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn

Book cover for Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla

Book cover for Politics Among Nations

Book cover for The Post-American World: Release 2.0

Book cover for The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Book cover for The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World

Book cover for Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power

Book cover for Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World

Book cover for The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Book cover for Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

Book cover for The World America Made

Book cover for A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order

Book cover for World Order

Regional Studies

Book cover for Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism

Book cover for Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Book cover for Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe

Book cover for Hirohito's War: The Pacific War, 1941-1945

Book cover for Milestones

Book cover for Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power

Book cover for The Next Great War?: The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict

Book cover for Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

Book cover for Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750

Book cover for The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

Book cover for Strategy

Book cover for The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power

Book cover for War in European History

History and Military History

Book cover for 1776

Book cover for The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783-1900 (Histories of the American Frontier Series)

Book cover for America's First Battles, 1776-1965

Book cover for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

Book cover for The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

Book cover for The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (The Liberation Trilogy)

Book cover for Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare

Book cover for Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

Book cover for Combat Ready?: The Eighth U.S. Army on the Eve of the Korean War

Book cover for The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944

Book cover for Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942

Book cover for Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945

Book cover for The First World War

Book cover for The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich

Book cover for The Guns of August

Book cover for Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Book cover for History of Rome

Book cover for Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945

Book cover for The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

Book cover for Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

Book cover for Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-39 (Stackpole Military History Series)

Book cover for The pursuit of power: Technology, armed force, and society since A.D. 1000

Book cover for The Regulars: The American Army, 1898-1941

Book cover for A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War

Book cover for Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers

Book cover for This Kind of War

Book cover for The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943

Leadership

Book cover for American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

Book cover for The Anatomy of Courage: The Classic WWI Study of the Psychological Effects of War

Book cover for Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005

Book cover for The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today

Book cover for The Generalship Of Alexander The Great

Book cover for George C. Marshall, Vol. 1: Education of a General, 1880-1939

Book cover for Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century

Book cover for Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Book cover for Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant  Volume 2

Book cover for A Message to Garcia

Book cover for A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service

Book cover for The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks

Book cover for Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime

Book cover for Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

Book cover for Thunderbolt: From The Battle of the Bulge to Vietnam and Beyond: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times

Book cover for The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education

Book cover for William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life

The Army Profession

Book cover for The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy

Book cover for The Art of War

Book cover for The Art Of War

Book cover for Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War

Book cover for The Campaigns of Napoleon

Book cover for Civil War Command And Strategy: The Process Of Victory And Defeat

Book cover for Frederick The Great On The Art Of War

Book cover for The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War

Book cover for History of the United States Army

Book cover for How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War

Book cover for Infantry in Battle

Book cover for Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory (Battles and Campaigns Series)

Book cover for Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age

Book cover for Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis

Book cover for Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought

Book cover for On War

Book cover for Reconsidering the American Way of War: US Military Practice from the Revolution to Afghanistan

Book cover for Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy

Book cover for The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations

Book cover for Principles of Maritime Strategy

Book cover for Strategy: A History

Book cover for The Strategy Of Indirect Approach

Book cover for The Strategy of Conflict

Book cover for War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict  in a Vietnamese Province

Book cover for War in the Modern World since 1815 (Warfare and History)

Fiction

Book cover for The Aeneid

Book cover for Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

Book cover for Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

Book cover for Iliad and Odyssey

Book cover for Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War