The February 2017 revision of the Navy reading list

(source) The Navy Professional Reading Program was developed to encourage a life-long habit of reading and learning among all Sailors. The books included in these collections can provide readers with a deeper understanding and appreciation for naval heritage, the profession of arms, and the complex modern world in which we operate.

Other revisions

May 2022

July 2018

January 2014

January 2012

January 2009

January 2008

This revision

The Canon

Book cover for Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought

Book cover for Strategy

Book cover for Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control

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

Book cover for The Constitution of the United States of America

Book cover for The Declaration of Independence and Other Great Documents of American History 1775-1865

Book cover for Articles of Confederation

Book cover for The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783

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

Book cover for Principles of Maritime Strategy

Book cover for The Art Of War

Book cover for On War

Core Values

Book cover for Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential

Book cover for Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right

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

Book cover for His Excellency: George Washington

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

Book cover for The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse: How to Spot Moral Meltdowns in Companies... Before It's Too Late

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

Book cover for America's Constitution: A Biography

Book cover for Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Book cover for Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot

Book cover for In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years

Book cover for Meditations

Book cover for Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading

Book cover for Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty

Book cover for Navigating the Seven Seas: Leadership Lessons of the First African American Father and Son to Serve at the Top of the US Navy

Book cover for The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command

Book cover for The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

Book cover for The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

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

Book cover for Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

Book cover for Enchiridion

Book cover for The Road to Character

Naval Power

Book cover for Toward a New Maritime Strategy: American Naval Thinking in the Post-Cold War Era

Book cover for The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command

Book cover for Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century

Book cover for Red Star over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy

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

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

Book cover for Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy

Book cover for Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know

Book cover for Pirate Alley: Commanding Task Force 151 Off Somalia

Book cover for Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers

Book cover for The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made A Difference

Book cover for Rickover and the Nuclear Navy: The Discipline of Technology

Book cover for The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War

Book cover for Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat

Book cover for Face of Battle

Book cover for Military Readiness: Concepts, Choices, Consequences

Book cover for Military Innovation in the Interwar Period

Book cover for All the Factors of Victory: Adm. Joseph Mason Reeves and the Origins of Carrier Air Power

Book cover for "Execute against Japan": The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

Book cover for John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail

Book cover for Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World

Book cover for Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway

Book cover for Master and Commander

Book cover for Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories

Book cover for 1812: The Navy's War

Book cover for Super Highway: Sea Power in the 21st Century

Book cover for Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

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

Book cover for 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century

Book cover for Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II

Book cover for The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Book cover for Joe Rochefort's War

Book cover for The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson

Book cover for Washington's Crossing

Book cover for One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander

Book cover for Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy

Book cover for No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf

Book cover for Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

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

Book cover for Hold Back the Night

Book cover for Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa

Book cover for Yellow Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for America's Military

Book cover for D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II

Book cover for The Victory at Sea

Book cover for Other Clay: A Remembrance of the World War II Infantry

Book cover for England in the Seven Years' War: A study in combined strategy. Volume 1

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

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

Book cover for The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

Book cover for Navigating the Seven Seas: Leadership Lessons of the First African American Father and Son to Serve at the Top of the US Navy

Book cover for The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945

Book cover for Service: A Navy SEAL at War

Book cover for Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of her Survivors

Book cover for The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy

Book cover for Leading Change

Book cover for First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps

Book cover for The Marines of Montford Point: America's First Black Marines

Book cover for American Spartans: The U.S. Marines: A Combat History from Iwo Jima to Iraq

Book cover for Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC

Book cover for Forgotten Warriors: The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, the Corps Ethos, and the Korean War

Book cover for Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

Fast Learning

Book cover for Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy

Book cover for On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Book cover for The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business

Book cover for The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century

Book cover for The High Velocity Edge

Book cover for The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Book cover for The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Book cover for A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

Book cover for Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Book cover for The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

Book cover for Thinking, Fast and Slow

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

Book cover for Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Book cover for The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'

Book cover for The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Book cover for The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action

Book cover for The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Book cover for Sensemaking in Organizations

Book cover for The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World

Book cover for Elements of Style

Book cover for Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology

Book cover for Envisioning Information

Book cover for Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Book cover for The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

Book cover for The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

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

Book cover for Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems

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

Book cover for Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Book cover for The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

Book cover for Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Book cover for Simulating War: Studying Conflict through Simulation Games

Book cover for Strategy: A History

Book cover for Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents

Book cover for The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations

Book cover for Red Team: How to Succeed By Thinking Like the Enemy

Book cover for The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

Book cover for Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare Warfare

Book cover for Managing the Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty

Navy Team

Book cover for The Accidental Admiral: A Sailor Takes Command at NATO

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

Book cover for Navigating the Seven Seas: Leadership Lessons of the First African American Father and Son to Serve at the Top of the US Navy

Book cover for Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading

Book cover for Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential

Book cover for A Vietnam Experience: Ten Years of Relection

Book cover for In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years

Book cover for Outliers: The Story of Success

Book cover for The Wisdom of Crowds

Book cover for The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Book cover for The Caine Mutiny: A Novel

Book cover for Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Partnerships

Book cover for Partnership for the Americas : Western Hemisphere strategy and U.S. Southern Command

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

Book cover for Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific

Book cover for World Order

Book cover for At ease: Stories I tell to friends

Book cover for The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

Book cover for In the Shadow of the Garrison State

Book cover for Grand Strategies in War and Peace

Book cover for The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives

Book cover for Crusade in Europe

Book cover for Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America

Book cover for The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone

Book cover for On China

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

Book cover for Value: The Four Cornerstones of Corporate Finance