The May 2016 revision of the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research reading list

(source) The Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research (CHACR) is, amongst other things, charged by the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) with ‘re-vitalising the conceptual component of fighting power, particularly within the Army’s officer corps’. It is every officer and soldiers’ job to learn about their profession; this reading list is intended to assist with that endeavour. The list that follows is quite daunting, if you see it as a compulsory catalogue of things that you must read. But it isn’t that. It is merely a collection of titles, grouped into categories, that you should find useful to read, refer to, or use as references as you see fit and as your career develops. That said, if you consider yourself to be a ‘professional soldier’ then it is our view that there are a few books and publications that you really should have read.

This revision

Philosophy and Strategy

Book cover for Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle

Book cover for On War

Book cover for Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction

Book cover for Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

Book cover for The Conduct Of War, 1789-1961: A Study Of The Impact Of The French, Industrial, And Russian Revolutions On War And Its Conduct (Quality Paperbacks Series)

Book cover for Strategy

Book cover for Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times

Book cover for The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World

Book cover for Clausewitz: His Life and Work

Book cover for The Art Of War

Book cover for The History of the Peloponnesian War

Book cover for The Prince

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

Book cover for Strategy

Book cover for War Diaries, 1939-1945: Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke

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

Book cover for Westmoreland's War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam

Book cover for Seeds of Disaster, The: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-39

Book cover for Strategy: A History

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

Book cover for Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and His War Cabinet

Book cover for World Order

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

Tactics and Operational Art

Book cover for Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle

Book cover for The Battle for Hunger Hill: The 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment at the Joint Readiness Training Cente r

Book cover for And We Shall Shock Them: The British Army in the Second World War

Book cover for Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam

Book cover for Lifeblood of War

Book cover for Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton

War at Sea, in the Air, and in the Cyber Domain

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

Book cover for Airpower for Strategic Effect

Book cover for Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution

Book cover for Airpower: Myths and Facts

Airpower: Myths and Facts

Colonel, USAF, Retired, Phillip S. Meilinger

View on Amazon.com | I've read this book

Book cover for The Bombing War

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

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

Book cover for In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914

Book cover for Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

Insights and Perspectives

Book cover for British Generals in Blair's Wars

Book cover for Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West's Afghanistan Campaign

Book cover for High Command: British Military Leadership in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Book cover for Not Mentioned in Despatches

Book cover for Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan

Book cover for Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq

Book cover for Bad Days in Basra

Book cover for The Edge: Is the Military Dominance of the West Coming to an End?

The Human Element in War

Book cover for So Few Got Through

Book cover for Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II

Book cover for Paths of Glory

Book cover for With a Machine Gun to Cambrai

Book cover for The General

Book cover for Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan

Book cover for Warriors: Portraits from the Battlefield

Book cover for Acts of War: Behavior of Men in Battle

Book cover for WAR

Book cover for Face of Battle

Book cover for Battle: A History Of Combat And Culture

Book cover for The Centurions

Book cover for The Field-Marshals Memoirs

Book cover for The Desert War: The classic trilogy on the North African campaign 1940-1943

Book cover for Homage to Catalonia

Book cover for Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers

Book cover for War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics

Book cover for Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors

Book cover for The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars

Book cover for Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People and Their Motives Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict

Command and Leadership

Book cover for The Mask of Command

Book cover for Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions

Book cover for Thinking, Fast and Slow

Book cover for Napoleon: A Life

Book cover for Defeat Into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1942-1945

Book cover for Generals And Generalship

Book cover for On the psychology of military incompetence

Professional Ethics

Book cover for Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death

Book cover for Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession

Book cover for Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict

Book cover for The GAMe: Unraveling a Military Sex Scandal

Book cover for Just And Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations

Innovation and Adaptation

Book cover for Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

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

Book cover for The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War

Book cover for The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050

Book cover for Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

Book cover for The dynamics of doctrine: The changes in German tactical doctrine during the First World War

Book cover for The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars

British Army Heritage

Book cover for Fire and Movement: The British Expeditionary Force and the Campaign of 1914

Book cover for Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front

Book cover for Warrior Race: A History of the British at War

Book cover for Red Coat, Green Machine: Continuity in Change in the British Army 1700 to 2000

Book cover for Stout Hearts: The British and Canadians in Normandy 1944

Book cover for Bugles and a Tiger: My life in the Gurkhas

Book cover for The Road Past Mandalay

The Context

Book cover for The Taliban Revival: Violence and Extremism on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier

Book cover for Swords and Ploughshares: Building Peace in the 21st Century

Book cover for Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century

Book cover for Imperial Life in The Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

Book cover for The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Book cover for Global Rules: America, Britain and a Disordered World

Book cover for Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security

Book cover for The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

Book cover for The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Book cover for Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare

Book cover for Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin's Russia

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

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

Book cover for Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War

Book cover for The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be

Book cover for New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Third Edition

Book cover for Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Book cover for Complex Emergencies

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

Book cover for The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

Book cover for World Order

Book cover for Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Book cover for Armed State Building: Confronting State Failure, 1898–2012

Book cover for The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It

Book cover for Killing Without Heart: Limits on Robotic Warfare in an Age of Persistent Conflict

Book cover for How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle

Book cover for The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations

Book cover for Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russia's Influence Abroad

Book cover for The Village

Book cover for The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

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

Book cover for The Breaking Of Nations

Book cover for The Arabs: A History

Book cover for The Secret History of al Qæda

Book cover for Yanks and Limeys: Alliance Warfare in the Second World War