Reading Suggestions from Bill Strange, MALA 2025
Based on various aspects of our discussions about war, I would like to share several works that focus on 20th century conflicts involving war and decision making. I find each of these books to be quite enlightening about the sort of topics with which we are dealing:
- Groupthink by Irving Janis. This work examines in eloquent detail the following: Pearl Harbor, The Marshall Plan, The Korean War, The Bay of Pigs, The Cuban Missile Crisis, Escalation of the Vietnam War, and The Watergate Cover-up. Incredible detail and insight. Top notch prose. An eye opener about group dynamics in decision making. Great lessons about organizational psychology and behavior in critical, strategic contexts.
- The 13th Valley by John Del Vecchio. A novel set in Vietnam. Impossible to put down. Raw, intense and true to the combat experience of individuals.
- The Lionheads by Josiah Bunting. Bunting is a graduate of VMI and a Rhodes Scholar who was president of VMI as well as a history professor at West Point. His book is a novel that explores the motivations of career military commanders during the Vietnam war and the impact on the average soldier. Cerebral and subtle.
- The New Soldier by John Kerry. This is a collection of anecdotes collected from the observations of numerous individual soldiers in Vietnam. It has raw, graphic reports from those who were there. Not for the faint of heart.
Doubtless there are many more works worth our reading. I have found these of value.
On to Thucydides!
