Eight Must-Read Books on Military History and Strategy
In my day job, I’m a military historian and specialist in military strategy. I teach the Naval War College Strategy course and a full spectrum of military history and strategy courses at my university. I get a lot of questions when bad things happen.
A new war has broken out, and people are again scrambling to understand the dynamics of war.
Why do nations go to war?
How are wars fought?
What strategies lead to victory?
Why do some nations fight on against seemingly hopeless odds while others collapse in defeat?
Below are the eight books I recommend to my graduate students and pretty much anyone who asks me about war and military history. Written by eminent scholars, they are intellectually engaging and — rare for academic works — eminently readable. Together, they will ground you in the study of war and important concepts in military history.
Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (2006). A masterful, intellectually nuanced discussion of war from the dawn of history to the present. Explores the roots of war and why we fight, how military systems developed over time, and an overview of major conflicts.
John Keegan, The Face of Battle (1976). In this immensely influential work, Keegan applied ideas from the relatively new field of social history to military history. Using three famous battles, Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme, Keegan examined the experience of battle from the soldier’s viewpoint, from the bottom up, as social historians say. Instead of carefully drawn maps with lines showing the movement of troops, you’ll read about the visceral realities of battle and the struggles of soldiers and junior officers to overcome their fears, make sense of the chaos around them, and face and fight their enemies.
Geoffrey Parker, The Cambridge History of Warfare (2020, 2nd ed.). While focused on the West and its rise, each chapter of Parker’s book offers a useful survey of military developments from the ancient Greeks and Romans, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern era.
Wayne E. Lee, Warfare and Culture in World History (2020). While Parker’s book offers a traditional historical survey, focusing on military organizations, technology, strategy, and leadership, Lee’s work injects culture into the narrative and includes discussions of non-western societies, including nomadic cultures, China, and Africa. As the authors of its nine chapters demonstrate, armies reflect the cultures and societies that produce them. Different societies think about war and wage war differently — and for different reasons.
Peter Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (1986). This updating of Edward Mead Earl’s Makers of Modern Strategy, published during World War II, is assigned to students at all of the American war colleges. It offers a chronological and thorough examination of changing strategic thought over the last 500 years. While some of the chapters are a bit dense, all of them repay multiple readings, and they need not be read in order. Those on nuclear war, air power, and mechanized warfare are particularly useful, as are those that examine important strategists, including Clausewitz, Jomini, Mahan, and Douhet. There’s periodic talk about assembling a new edition of this valuable work, but so far no one has done so.
Edward Luttwak, Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (1976). An influential political scientist and military analyst, Luttwak argues that despite several dozen emperors and regular civil wars, the Roman Empire maintained a consistent and rational approach to foreign policy and grand strategy. The Romans garrisoned the borders of their empire with legions who operated aggressively and sought to counter potential threads before they penetrated the empire’s borders. Over time, as weaker legions faced more dangerous enemies, Rome developed a system of support defense in depth that relied on frontier defenses like Hadrian’s Wall and fortified cities. While criticized by many ancient historians, Luttwak’s work established a model other scholars follow to assess the grand strategies of a host of major powers, past and present.
Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms (1992). Thirty years later, Weinberg’s masterpiece remains the best single-volume history of World War II. The narrative flows smoothly, providing a wealth of detail and incisive critiques of important political and strategic decisions. Unlike too many histories of the war, Weinberg adeptly weaves the Holocaust into the story of the war, demonstrating its centrality to Nazi policy and war making. It is a masterful example of how one should write military history.
Mark Clodfleter, The Limits of Air Power (1989). Clodfleter’s book remains the best analysis of the American bombing of Vietnam and why that prolonged bombing campaign failed to produce victory. Clodfetler explores the utility of bombing and what air power can and cannot do in war. It is an important read for today when the first American response to practically any crisis is to consider bombing something or someone.