How do you read? It’s a simple question, but it may not have a simple answer. In a time when we are seeing less of each other, whether because of a pandemic, increased telework as a result of the pandemic, or self-imposed technological isolation, how we read has the potential to vary as much as how we interact with others on a daily basis.

Some of us have difficulty ingesting books that are not printed on dead trees while others embrace the freedom of having someone else read books to us while we drive, hike, or run on a treadmill. ‘To read’, like a book itself, holds many different meanings.

Read. We all realize that—as our “shelfies” attest—we need not always look forward to new books when there are so many rich veins to mine in our to-be-read lists that not only help us look back into history but were literally written in it.

Read. No matter how we choose to consume, enjoy, learn, develop our leadership and professional skills, or simply relax with a good book, The Strategy Bridge was here to help in 2021.

We are proud to have hosted contributors adept at identifying the strengths and weaknesses in the scholarly works they chose to review, and recommend to you, our readers, volumes that will increase your scholarship or perhaps point you towards better resources if the book they’re reviewing falls short. We were here to help.

Considering a book on the politically nuanced history of Russian intelligence and covert spy programs? Our #Reviewing series in 2021 had you covered. We were here to help.

Craig Whiteside, co-author of his own analysis of Islamic State source materials, offered The Strategy Bridge community a door to understanding a a comprehensive work illustrating one man’s impact on today’s jihadist landscape. We were here to help.

Looking for international perspectives from reviewers and authors around the world? We were pleased to offer the views of the Commandant of the Canadian Army Command and Staff College on Gabriel Avila’s book on leadership and command pressure or Reed Bonadonna’s effort on the subject of officer education and development. Or maybe an analysis of a work on the effects of social media from the perspective of an Indian think tank was what you were looking for. We were here to help.

Interested in a self-published fictional account of a fresh lieutenant and his cavalry squadron in Iraq during the 2007-2008 surge or the perspective of a Chaplain in that conflict? Our #Reviewing series in 2021 had something for you all year long, even to the last. We were here to help.

Read. No matter what reading vector you choose. No matter what interests you—learning new ways of thinking about how art can shape the civil-military relationship, expanding your perspectives of strategy through science fiction, thinking about how poetry can illuminate the experience of conflict, or how personnel policies are shaped and how they shape the force—The Strategy Bridge had, and still has, something for you in 2021.

And in 2022? We’ll be here to help.

#TheBridgeReads

The Craft of Wargaming: A Detailed Planning Guide for Defense Planners and Analysts. Jeff Appleget, Robert Burks, and Fred Cameron. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2020.

Read a review from Natalia Wojtowicz here:
Despite the increasing popularity of wargaming, academic and professional sources are still scarce. The newest book on wargaming is published by the Naval Institute Press and features a robust description of wargaming as implemented by the United States Naval Postgraduate School . It explains the different purposes of wargaming with the main focus on analytic wargames.

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health—and How We Must Adapt. Sinan Aral. New York, NY: Random House, 2020.

Read a review by Thejus Gireesh here:
Aral’s seminal book provides two fundamental arguments: first, social media promised and still promises economic, political, and social uplift for people; it can also cause perils, such as external election influence, financial manipulation, privacy issues, spreading of fake news, and so forth. The author also argues that left unchecked, social media can bring disharmony and destruction to a country's economic, political, and social structures. Therefore, he opines that to fully utilise the potential of social media platforms and avoid their drawbacks, there needs to be a rigorous scientific understanding of social media and knowledge of its nuances to eradicate the unscientific hysteria around social media.

Twenty Years of Service: The Politics of Military Pension Policy and the Long Road to Reform. Brandon J. Archuleta. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2020.

Read Tobias Switzer’s review here:
For a chewy policy book about a usually anodyne subject, pension reform, Archuleta’s Twenty Years of Service was an electrifying read. Published in 2020, two years after the Department of Defense implemented the first substantive change in its military retirement pension policy in seventy years, Twenty Years of Service asks, and deftly answers, two questions. First, why did the military’s pension system remain unchanged for so long when almost everything else about the military’s personnel policy had changed since World War II? Second, Archuleta asks why and how a change to the military pension system finally occurred as it did when President Obama signed the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act into law in November 2015.

Bitskrieg: The New Challenge of Cyberwarfare. John Arquilla. New York, NY: Polity, 2021.

Read a review by Nicholas Sambaluk here:
In Bitskrieg, John Arquilla distills much from his three decades of advocacy about networked warfare into a compact volume accessible to a wide audience. He displays a continuing ability to produce provocative arguments and engaging books. The tenets of Bitskrieg are consistent with many of Arquilla’s previous writings. These include the point that networked warfare or netwar encompasses cyber conflict but extends beyond it.

No Pressure… But Don’t Mess This Up. Gabriel Avilla. Pennsauken, NJ: BookBaby, 2020.

Read Tod Strickland’s review here:
Avilla offers a wealth of experience, a distinctive voice, and the courage to critically examine his actions while he exposes his audience to the issues he faced. This short volume is akin to a combination self-help book and an extended reflection on action, adroitly tracing the timeline of a typical command tour without drifting into an hagiographic memoir and accusations of self-aggrandizement. Instead, it is a candid discussion of the challenges many commanders can expect to see during their time.

Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin: A Story of the U.S. Military’s Commitment to Leave No One Behind. Eileen A. Bjorkman. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2020.

Read a review by Jack Curtis here:
Unforgotten in the Gulf of Tonkin is an outstanding contribution that recounts and analyzes the growth and development of combat search and rescue. In telling that story, Bjorkman weaves in a rich and critically important discussion of larger ethical and moral issues associated with war. Her commendable work deserves a spot in the libraries of all military aviators and students of the profession of arms.

How to Think Like an Officer: Lessons in Learning and Leadership for Soldiers and Other Citizens. Reed Bonadonna. Latham, MD: Stackpole, 2020.

Read Tod Strickland’s review here:
The ideas that Bonadonna espouses for improving officer education and for widening the lenses that get used to examine problems have much to commend them. His arguments that there are elements of military culture that need to be re-examined and changed will certainly raise questions, but this is a good thing…Investing in the time to examine how officers think, and considering how we can improve upon the status quo, is an investment worth making. Arguably, doing so is a requirement of anyone belonging to the military profession.

The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare. Christian Brose. New York, NY: Hachette Books, 2020.

Read Mitchell White’s review here:
Christian Brose’s The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare is a book about death. It is a book about Senator John McCain’s legacy after pursuing defense reform as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It is a book that makes a case for the death of the current tradition of American power projection. Correspondingly it is a book about the desired death of a defense acquisitions ecosystem that has, according to Brose, contributed to building a military ill-equipped for the 21st century.

A Bridge in Babylon: Stories of a Military Chaplain in Iraq. Owen R. Chandler. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2021.

Read John Young’s review here:
Short, accessible, and relatively inexpensive, with an appealing cover, the paperback could easily serve as the basis for a discussion group, such as a church Bible study or a chaplains’ support group. Individually or collectively, it will be read profitably by chaplains and other service members looking for the words to describe their feelings; by policymakers and other stakeholders seeking insights into the recent lived experiences of military chaplains; and by the wider public, including future historians and other scholars of the chaplaincy and of the Iraq War.

Intelligence Analysis: A Target-Centric Approach (6th Edition). Robert M. Clark. Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2019.

Read Diego Bolchini’s review here:
This book has many strengths. The style is concise, and the main concepts are understandable, focusing on important state and non-state actor related issues. Each chapter ends with a summary, critical thinking questions for students and readers, as well as a detailed bibliography and notes section. Possible weaknesses derive, on the other hand, from a low level of granularity offered in the text when it comes to the illustration of some specific techniques such as structured analysis technique that could help intelligence professionals to refine their level of analysis.

The Folly of Generals: How Eisenhower’s Broad Front Strategy Lengthened World War II. David P. Colley. Philadelphia, PA.: Casemate, 2021.

Read a review by Jeffrey Crean here:
Writing counterfactual history is always of tremendous difficulty, reminding me of astronomer Carl Sagan’s quip that history could only be a science if one possessed a time machine with which to run hypothesis-testing experiments. One can neither prove nor falsify the claims on offer here, but only guess at their plausibility. Such analytical exercises are welcome, and occasionally fruitful. The Folly of Generals will and should be welcomed by military enthusiasts, and is worthy of debate in staff colleges and other institutions of military education.

Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin’s Spies. Gordon Corera. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2020.

Read a review from Devlin Kostal here:
Corera posits a thesis midway through the book, that Russian hybrid warfare, in all its forms, does not constitute military hard power, but it also does not conform to the traditional definitions of soft power—deferring to Joseph Nye’s description of soft power as attractive instead of coercive. Instead, Corera defines the Russian influence effort as “dark power,” playing on “greed and ambition.” The combination of this dark power with the hybrid warfare model creates a stark picture Corera argues is virtually impossible to combat.

How to Prevent Coups d’État: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival. Erica De Bruin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020.

Read a review by Emily VanMeter here:
Erica De Bruin’s How to Prevent Coups d’État: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival was a long-awaited release for a couple of reasons. First, the initial article this book is based on has been cited nearly 100 times in less than three years. Introducing a way to quantify a notoriously difficult to quantify concept changed the discussion in national security and civilian-military relations, and not just among coup scholars. Second, De Bruin is thorough in examining consequences throughout her work.

War at the Speed of Light: Directed-Energy Weapons and the Future of Twenty-First Century Warfare. Louis A. Del Monte. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2021.

Read a review by Joshua Huminski here:
Del Monte’s latest book War at the Speed of Light: Directed-Energy Weapons and the Future of Twenty-First Century Warfare explores how lasers, electromagnetic weapons, and other energy-based or -driven weapons could change how future wars are fought. Del Monte argues that these technologies will accelerate the pace of war. The use of directed-energy weapons will mean a faster time to kill resulting in smaller windows for decision making at all levels of conflict. Taken together with artificial intelligence and cyber weapons, Del Monte argues that these changes will upend strategic stability as we understand it today.

Fidelis: A Memoir. Teresa Fazio. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2020.

Read Alexis Henshaw’s review here:
Teresa Fazio’s Fidelis: A Memoir is a most welcome entry to this genre. The book is a readable and engaging first-person account of her journey from band geek to Marine Corps officer, her deployment to Iraq, and her troubled re-entry to civilian life.

Military Agility: Ensuring Rapid and Effective Transition from Peace to War. Meir Finkel. Translated by Moshe Tlamim. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2020.

Read Jonathan Beall’s review here:
Military history attests to nations’ struggle to transition from a peacetime footing to a wartime posture, but this work draws solely from Israel’s modern experiences. While Finkel explores an overlooked concept, focusing analysis through the lens of Israel’s experiences since 1948 imposes methodological limits upon the work.

The Ship. C.S. Forester. Toronto, Canada: S.J. Reginald Saunders, 1943.

Read Todd M. Johnson’s review here:
Forester’s war-time output and his many works of fiction and non-fiction published both before and after the war all highlight his almost singular ability to place the reader on the proverbial bridge, sea-spray in their face and danger all around.

Exercise of Power: American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World. Robert M. Gates. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

Read Daniel Scheeringa’s review here:
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ latest book is a unique work. Exercise of Power is not a conventional Washington memoir, nor is it a foreign policy textbook. Instead, Gates examines how America can apply its power around the world, and studies the ways it has applied, or failed to apply, the range of its power to foreign policy. The result is a hybrid; part history, part foreign policy text, that makes maximum use of Gates' unique life story.

The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World. Barry Gewen. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2021.

Read Mark Schell’s review here:
The modern world is no less dangerous than the one Kissinger faced. In fact, the emergence of a multipolar order demands now more than ever that policymakers have pragmatic and, in many cases, sensibly pessimistic approaches. Barry Gewen’s book makes a lasting contribution to that end, and will help all readers understand the value, as Henry Kissinger so powerfully put it, of living “with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.”

The Forgotten Front: The Eastern Theatre of World War 1, 1914-1915. Gerhard P. Gross, Editor. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2018.

Read Colleen Moore’s review here:
The English-language publication of The Forgotten Front suggests that military history is not only alive and well but also integral to historians’ understanding of the first world war. Moreover, it showcases the breadth and depth of military history in its coverage of topics such as military strategy, national identity, and collective memory.

The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad. Thomas Hegghammer. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Read a review from Craig Whiteside here:
Azzam’s legacy is a complicated one. It is difficult to pin down the exact extent of his influence and where others have distorted his ideas. Moreover, even though Azzam was critical of the previous era of transnational hijacking and terrorism, he ultimately became the inspiration for a subsequent, more violent movement, one that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims, most of them at the hands of other Muslims. But as complex as Azzam’s legacy in the evolution of global jihad has been, Thomas Hegghammer’s masterful book will certainly contribute to our growing, collective understanding of his important role.

Power on the Precipice: The Six Choices America Faces in a Turbulent World. Andrew Imbrie. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020.

Read Frank Hoffman’s review here:
Decline is a choice for a status quo superpower, and choices are central steps in reformulating the future role of the U.S. on the world stage. But what are those choices and are U.S. leaders ready to summon the American people to support these choices? In addressing American relative decline, Imbrie offers guidance and answers for six possible strategic choices, and he devotes a chapter to each.

Freedom. Sebastian Junger. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2021.

Read James Bradford’s review here:
For the past two decades, Sebastian Junger has been one of the more insightful writers and filmmakers of historical and contemporary events. His new book is part travelogue, part political and philosophical musing. Junger dissects and contemplates the meanings of freedom, and how such meanings shape individuals and the societies in which they are both running from and/or dependent on.

From Hope to Horror: Diplomacy and the Making of the Rwandan Genocide. Joyce E. Leader. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2020.

Read Robert Spencer’s review here:
Rwanda in the early 1990s was going through a transition to democracy that obligated its society to resolve decades old disputes between two native ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. A U.S. diplomatic team assisted in negotiations that resulted in the Arusha Accords, outlining a provisional government for the transition that included a power sharing agreement. Without a way to enforce the accords, the U.S. diplomatic team struggled to resolve embittered ethic differences so that a viable peace could be maintained, and the growing instability deteriorated into the genocide of 1994. From Hope to Horror is the detailing of the events that led to the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide written by Joyce Leader, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Rwanda from 1991-1994.

The Other Face of Battle: America’s Forgotten Wars and the Experience of Combat. Wayne E. Lee, Anthony E. Carlson, David L. Preston, and David Silbey. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Read James Sandy’s review here:
Military history and its practitioners were long derided for their obsession with battle. The bugles and banners style of operational history, the standard approach of the discipline until the mid-1970s, has cast a long shadow of exclusion and dismissal upon military historians and their purpose. That all changed when John Keegan’s The Face of Battle was released in 1976. Wayne Lee, Anthony Carlson, David Preston, and David Silbey come together in The Other Face of Battle to present the next step in Keegan’s cause while highlighting a serious flaw in his objective. This book and its four authors, all of outstanding reputation and pedigree, stand on the 40-year foundation set by the cultural turn. In a masterful homage to Keegan and with eyes to the future, Lee, Carlson, Preston, and Silbey take the iconic work and its framework into the present by asking questions that are as difficult as they are important.

Korea: The War Before Vietnam. Callum A. MacDonald. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1986.

Read a review by Harrison Manlove here:
Callum A. MacDonald writes with short, sharp clarity. The precision of his writing does not take away from necessary details or the importance of the Korean War in international history, especially for those involved in that conflict. The book is driven by a narrative told through official documents, robust secondary sources, and scholarship developed over nearly 35 years.

Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films. Sean M. Maloney. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2020.

Read Hiroshi Kitamura’s review here:
Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films is a fresh study that attempts to answer these intriguing questions. Through a close reading of a cluster of “Cold War nuclear crisis films,” which is described as “a staple of the Cold War popular cultural milieu from the 1950s to the 1980s,” this clearly written and thought-provoking book explores how these screen narratives depicted the nuclear weapons apparatus and strategic decision-making.

Why We Fight. Mike Martin. London, UK: Hurst & Company, 2021.

Read Heather Venable’s review here:
This book gives the reader much to consider and is particularly useful due to its unique approach that complements works in other fields like political science. There are no easy answers to why we fight. Regardless of some of oxytocin’s evolutionary victories over testosterone, this book provides much to ponder and understand regarding the inherent job security of being in the business of war.

Kyle Carpenter. Mike McGregor. Photograph, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2013.

Read a review from Rebecca Burgess here:
What is the meaning of an outstretched hand when its own arm has been eviscerated by war and its palm now sprouts a Purple Heart Medal? This question has puzzled me since I first encountered the McGregor portrait. And it has puzzled me as being of a piece with the larger canvas of the uncertain civil-military social relationship that has accumulated in America during twenty years of war.

The First Code Talkers: Native American Communicators in World War I. William C. Meadows. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021.

Read David Retherford’s review here:
William C. Meadows is the accomplished author of six distinctive books on Native Americans. Meadows' newest book, The First Code Talkers: Native American Communicators in World War I is an academic text that argues for recognition of the Choctaw Code Talkers during the First World War. Many are familiar with the Navajo Code Talkers from the Second World War, but few know of the Choctaw Nation Code Talkers of the First World War.

Homegrown ISIS in America. Alexander Meleagou-Hitchens, Seamus Hughes, and Bennett Clifford. New York, NY: I.B. Taurus, 2021.

Read a review by Christina Sixta Rinehart here:
The authors suggest that ISIS is not gone and that offshoots or inspired devotees will attack America in the future. The authors are likely correct in their warning and it is true that the United States is not as prepared to anticipate these attacks or prevent them as it could be. They argue that ISIS has not been as prolific in the United States as they have been in Europe due to geographical proximity to Iraq and Syria, unique American legal tools, and unestablished social networks like those seen in Europe. However, with time, ISIS or their followers can overcome these problems through technological innovation and learning. COVID has probably played a helpful role in keeping people from traveling and communicating for the time being. The American legal system must have counterterrorism tools in place to deal with these people and to neutralize them without trampling on the First Amendment. The Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and CIA can stop terrorist attacks if they have the proper information ahead of time but identifying possible terrorists and tracking them is still something that the intelligence agencies are working on. In short, the United States has a long way to go.

Blood, Guts and Grease: George S. Patton in World War I. Jon B. Mikolashek. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2019.

Read a review by Lex Oren here:
Through historical research, Mikolashek captures the early experiences of the soldier and the lessons he learned during the Great War that influenced his character and leadership twenty years later during his World War II campaigning. In addition to descriptions of Patton’s early battlefield exploits, Mikolashek writes of the birth of tank warfare and the creation of the Army’s Tank Corps. From early success at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point to the transition to the newly formed Tank Corps, Patton made informed and deliberate decisions as a young officer that steered his career to the ground floor of tank warfare.

The Character Gap: How Good Are We? Christian B. Miller. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Read a review by Pauline Shanks Kaurin here:
If you are looking for an accessible, practical introduction to moral psychology and ethics for undergraduate, Professional Military Education classes, or the general interest reader, look no further. Philosopher and psychology researcher Christian Miller’s The Character Gap distills much of his own scholarly work, as well as the thoughts and writing of others, into a readable, accessible volume with practical examples, citations from important studies, and popular culture references that bring alive questions of moral character and development. This volume asks us not just to consider others’ moral character, but also reflect upon our own, the gaps in it, and how we can improve it.

Why Nation-Building Matters: Political Consolidation, Building Security Forces, and Economic Development in Failed and Fragile States. Keith W. Mines. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2020.

Read a review from Brian Mathews here:
This book is divided into three types of capacity building campaigns in roughly chronological order through eight U.S. interventions. The first section covers the efforts of the United States during the Cold War in Colombia, Grenada, and El Salvador. In using these examples, Mines identifies a number of conditions necessary for international interventions to succeed. First, governance will not take root without the support of the host nation and a functioning political agreement. Next, nation-building is a whole-of-government exercise and requires attention and resources equal to, if not greater, than in times of war. Finally, nation-building must include representation from all members and sections of the host population. Mines returns to these first hard lessons learned at the conclusion of his book and re-emphasizes the simple conditions requisite for successful nation-building.

The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley. Wesley Morgan. New York, NY: Random House, 2021.

Read Chris Townsend’s review here:
The Hardest Place is an incredibly well-written piece of non-fiction that blends aspects of both an action novel and a history lesson. Morgan puts a human face on both sides of the conflict in all its facets by continuously highlighting the individual stories of the women and men who served there. Military students of history, along with anyone interested in America’s longest war, would benefit from reading this excellent book. The military profession has a duty to learn from the conflict, and this book is an essential introduction to a small piece that represents much of the trouble with the broader whole.

Restoring Thucydides: Testing Familiar Lessons and Deriving New Ones. Andrew R. Novo and Jay M. Parker. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2020.

Read a review from William D. Burghardt here:
This book responds to the recent upswing in interest in Thucydides in international relations and public circles, and seeks to get international relations scholars more engaged in the nuances of Thucydides. It presents common assumptions made from Thucydides’ text, demonstrates how the reality of the situation in Thucydides’ text and in Greece at the time was more complicated, and gives readers some take-aways to consider when contemplating how to apply the lessons of Thucydides. Speaking directly to international relations scholarship and theory in a way that few classical scholars would, the work is good for those who want a book that addresses the specific ways in which international relations scholars and the media interpret Thucydides. However, the work's simplifications and omissions impair its overall impact.

Dodge Bomb: Outside the Wire in the Second Iraq War. Darin Pepple. 2021.

Read Jon Farr’s review here:
Dodgebomb works as a story of an Iraq deployment. For those who have deployed, the stories and characters ring true. For someone with no military experience, the stories are relatable, funny, heart-wrenching, and effectively convey that experience. Pepple’s treatment of the hard decisions leaders face in combat is equally effective, leaving the reader understanding them, but not always liking them.

The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, & Leadership in the Most Male-Dominated Organization in the World. Shannon Huffman Polson. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.

Read Stephanie K. Erwin’s review here:
Throughout her book, Huffman Polson argues that grit is a skill that can and should be developed as an integral component of successful leadership. She finds this to be particularly evident in the experiences of women who have served in the U.S. military, which she classifies as the most male-dominated organization in the world. The participants and storytellers hail from a variety of occupational specialties, service branches, and military backgrounds. Their stories encompass the breadth of a military career, beginning with the author’s childhood determination to join military service to stories from general officers and covering operational, administrative, and personal experiences in which grit and leadership were integral.

Asymmetric Killing: Risk Avoidance, Just War, and the Warrior Ethos. Neil C. Renic. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Read a review by Paul Vicars here:
Neil C. Renic’s Asymmetric Killing is a thoughtful, if imperfect, assessment of the morality of riskless war. Within the skeptical academic discourse surrounding unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), authors either deflate the virtue of the men/women who employ such weapons, inflate the influence of technology on the operator or decision-maker, or conflate asymmetry and moral wrongness. Renic grapples, to some degree, with each of these aspects of the topic using a systematic, historical, and balanced method.

No Conquest, No Defeat: Iran’s National Security Strategy. Ariane Tabatabai. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Read Gregory Brew’s review here:
No Conquest, No Defeat: Iran’s National Security Strategy by political scientist Ariane Tabatabai is an ambitious study that situates the security policies and practices of the Islamic Republic in the context of Iranian history. The book’s central claim is that important lines of continuity connect Iran’s current approach to security to the policies of past regimes. This refutes the oft-made claim that the Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979 constituted a major break in Iran’s foreign policy.

Atlas at War! Eds. Michael Vassallo and Allan Harvey. Annapolis, MD: Dead Reckoning, 2020.

Read a review from Michael Hankins here:
The 50 stories in Atlas at War range from 1951 to 1960, curated by comics history author Michael Vassallo, who has previously written on the history of Marvel Comics. Most of the stories are about the Korean War and World War II, although there are a few stories about other conflicts. Readers will be interested to see early, non-superhero, work by famed creators such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, who defined the early periods of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. A vast array of other, lesser-known to today’s readers, talents contribute fascinating work as well. However, while this collection of early war comics will please older readers who might nostalgically remember these types of stories from their youth, and provide fascinating historiographical insight into how popular culture contributed to the culturally constructed memory of these wars, the work could probably benefit from more contextualization, analysis, and commentary.

The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution. Kevin Weddle. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Read Daniel Sukman’s review here:
The Compleat Victory is a reminder that the hard-learned lessons of today’s conflicts are eerily like the lessons taught more than two centuries ago. Informal relationships outside of the chain of command still matter. The great captains of history have genius in planning as well as in execution, meaning high levels of grip as Weddle defines it. Finally, leaders and staffs must continually examine and evaluate their assumptions on the character or nature of the fight they are in.

Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, 1755–1801. Charles Edward White. Warwick, UK: Helion & Co., 2020.

Read Michael Minerva’s review here:
Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, the long-awaited prequel to The Enlightened Soldier, is a detailed account of the developmental period of Scharnhorst’s Bildung, when he matured into the enlightened soldier. Unlike most writing about Scharnhorst, in Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, Charles White focuses exclusively on the less well known period of his life while he was still serving in Hanover. In doing so, White explores how the seeds of military Bildung initially take root and begin to blossom in Scharnhorst’s life.

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. Craig Whitlock. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Read Brandan P. Buck’s review here:
Craig Whitlock’s The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War is essential reading for national security scholars, and anyone interested in a bureaucratic history of America’s longest war. His research illustrates some truly dispiriting failures of American foreign policy formulation, military planning, and program execution. The book also serves as a bitter reminder that the state will lie to the public and often for less than noble purposes.

The Global Risks Report 2021, 16th Edition. World Economic Forum. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum, 2021.

Read Natasha Fernando’s review here:
The report is timely and covers a broad range of risks that pose a threat to international security and stability. This article reviews the relevance of the Global Risks Report to corporate and public sectors delving into the risks identified in the report, the methodology used to collect the data, and demographic profiling.

Some Are Always Hungry. Jihyun Yun. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020.

Read Michelle Sabala’s review here:
Military officers may not be inclined to reach for a book of poetry to bolster their understanding of warfare, but important lessons can be drawn from seemingly unusual sources. And while the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Professional Reading Program has been expanded to include cinema, photography, and even TED Talks, poetry in book or singular form appears to have never made the decades-old list. Similarly, poetry does not seem to be included on sister service recommended reading lists. Despite this, there is a place for poetry somewhere in the military leader’s piles of literature, history, and leadership books, one that puts a little heart into the science of war.

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Header Image: Woman Reading Book Among Shelves on Balcony in American History Room in New York Public Library (Alfred Eisenstaedt)