Military Studies: Naval Science professional reading list

Introductory work aimed at junior seafarers, those who make decisions affecting the sea services, and those who educate seafarers and decision-makers. Introduces readers to the main theoretical ideas that shape how statesmen and commanders make and execute maritime strategy in times of peace and war.

eBook

The story of the men who fought in destroyers, cruisers, and battleships in the narrow, deadly waters of "Ironbottom Sound" in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

Print Book

Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years,Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world--both its horrors and its thrills--and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature.

Print Book

Combining a close knowledge of Asia with naval combat experience and expertise in sea-power theory, the authors assess how the rise of Chinese sea power will affect U.S. maritime strategy in Asia.

eBook

The authors surveyed over two hundred active and retired four-star military officers about their reading habits and favorite books, asking each for a list of titles that strongly influenced their leadership skills.

eBook

Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort--even their own survival--for the good of those in their care. Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a "Circle of Safety" that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside.

Print Book; also available as an ebook

What happens when a Predator drone has as much autonomy as a Google car? Or when a weapon that can hunt its own targets is hacked? Although it sounds like science fiction, the technology already exists to create weapons that can attack targets without human input. Engages military history, global policy, and cutting-edge science to argue that we must embrace technology where it can make war more precise and humane, but without surrendering human judgment.

Print Book

An FBI agent hunts a new kind of terrorist through a Washington, DC, of the future in this ground-breaking book--at once a gripping technothriller and a fact-based tour of tomorrow. America is on the brink of a revolution, one both technological and political. After narrowly stopping a bombing at Washington's Union Station, FBI Special Agent Lara Keegan receives a new assignment: to field-test an advanced police robot. As a series of shocking catastrophes unfolds, the two find themselves investigating a conspiracy whose mastermind is using cutting-edge tech to rip the nation apart.

eBook

A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines. If the predicted breakthroughs occur and superhuman AI emerges, we will have created entities far more powerful than ourselves. How can we ensure they never have power over us?

Print Book; also available as an ebook

We are living in the age of Durable Disorder--a period of unrest created by numerous factors: China's rise, Russia's resurgence, America's retreat, global terrorism, international criminal empires, climate change, dwindling natural resources, and bloody civil wars. What is the future of war? How can we survive? If Americans are drawn into major armed conflict, can we win?

Print Book

A timely and important analysis of how we need to reset our intuition as a result of four forces colliding and transforming the global economy: the rise of emerging markets, the accelerating impact of technology on the natural forces of market competition, an aging world population, and accelerating flows of trade, capital and people.

Print Book

Reveals a glimpse inside the SEAL Team SIX brotherhood, and presents an indelible portrait of a highly trained warrior whose final act of bravery led to the ultimate sacrifice.

eBook

An informative review of how robotic and unmanned systems are impacting every aspect of American life, from how we fight our wars to how we play to how we grow our food. Takes you behind the scenes and describes how Predators, Reapers, Scan Eagles, and dozens of other pilotless aircraft have been used to fight the Global War on Terrorism.

Print Book

An unprecedented portrait of the Battle of Samar, a naval engagement unlike any other in U.S. history. Captures with unforgettable intensity the men, the strategies, and the sacrifices that turned certain defeat into a legendary victory.

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Examines the issues surrounding military theory, war crimes, and the spoils of war from the Athenian attack on Melos to the My Lai massacre. Examines a variety of conflicts in order to understand exactly why, according to Walzer, "the argument about war and justice is still a political and moral necessity."

Print Book

Examines the evolution of American naval thinking in the post-Cold War era. It recounts the development of the U.S. Navy's key strategic documents from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the release in 2007 of the U.S. Navy's maritime strategy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. It critically analyzes the Navy's way of thinking and ideas, and recounts how they interacted with those that govern U.S. strategy to shape the course of U.S. naval strategy in the post-Cold War era.

eBook

The authors challenge the common view of grand strategy as unitary. They eschew prescription of any one specific approach in favor of describing what America’s military actually does, day to day. They argue that a series of fundamental recent changes in the global system, the inevitable jostling of bureaucratic politics, and the practical limitations of field operations combine to ensure that each presidential administration inevitably resorts to a variety of strategies.

eBook

Two legal scholars explore the security and political implications of revolutionary new technologies from drones to 3-D printers and explain how governments must adapt to our brave new world of dispersed threats.

Print Book; also available as an ebook

Thousands of years ago, Herodotus and Plutarch immortalized Spartan society in their histories; but today, little is left of the ancient city or the social structure of this momentous culture. One of the few antiquarian marks of the civilization that has survived lies scores of miles away from Sparta, at a narrow Greek mountain pass called Thermopylae. It was there that three hundred of Sparta's finest warriors held back the invading millions of the Persian empire and valiantly gave their lives in the selfless service of democracy and freedom.

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A firsthand look inside the life of one of the greatest heroes of the Greatest Generation, Sgt. John Basilone. He was the only Marine in World War II to have received the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and a Purple Heart..

Print Book

Wars, fought on a grand scale with global consequences, are made up of countless smaller battles and events. One such battle pitted a North Vietnamese Army battalion of 700+ men against the men of Company I, Third Battalion, Ninth Marines, Third Marine Division. Of the seven officers in the field at the beginning, only three walked out. The author was one of them.

Print Book

The Marine Corps is known for its heroes, and Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller has long been considered the greatest of them all. His assignments and activities covered an extraordinary spectrum of warfare. With his bulldog face, barrel chest, gruff voice, and common touch, Puller has remained the epitome of the Marine combat officer.

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Mao Zedong’s case for the extensive use of an irregular form of warfare in which small groups of combatants use mobile military tactics in the forms of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army.

Print Book; also available as an ebook

Originally published in 1940 by the U.S. Marine Corps, this book examines the practical and philosophical aspects of low-intensity conflicts, which were then referred to as 'Small Wars.' Topics include military peacekeeping, counterinsurgency operations, strategy, psychology, dealings with foreign civilians, as well as implementation of a democratically-elected government.

eBook

The story of a platoon of tough, young Marines enduring the tropical hell of Southeast Asian jungles while facing an invisible enemy--in a war no one understands. Filled with the sounds and smells of combat, it is nevertheless a book about people, an amazing variety of closely observed characters caught up in circumstances beyond their control. Expresses the basic ambiguity of war: the repulsion of war's destruction contrasted with the grisly attraction of war as the ultimate test of survival.

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Fictional account in which the United States, China, and Russia eye each other across a twenty-first century version of the Cold War, which suddenly heats up at sea, on land, in the air, in outer space, and in cyberspace.

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How "a handful of bastards and outlaws fighting under a piece of striped bunting" humbled the omnipotent British Navy. Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military had become the most divisive issue facing the new government. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect American commerce against the Mediterranean pirates, or drain the treasury and provoke hostilities with the great powers?

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Navies have always provided a way of policing, and sometimes exploiting, the system. In contemporary conditions, navies, and other forms of maritime power, are having to adapt, in order to exert the maximum power ashore in the company of others and to expand the range of their interests, activities and responsibilities. Their traditional tasks still apply but new ones are developing fast.

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Dweck shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset--those who believe that abilities are fixed--are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset--those who believe that abilities can be developed. Reveals how we can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.

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How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules, and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable, while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers - only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in?

eBook

A deeply personal and candid look at what it is like to experience the ordeal of combat, critically examining how we might better prepare our soldiers for war. Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readings--from Homer to The Mahabharata to Jung.

Print Book

A non-technical introduction to important concepts such as machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), robotics, and more. Guides you through real-world case studies and practical implementation steps. Expands on the bigger questions that surround AI, including societal trends, ethics, and future impact AI will have on world governments, company structures, and daily life.

eBook

Those who have imagined future war have often had an idealized notion of it as confined, brief, and decisive, and have regularly taken insufficient account of the possibility of long wars. Freedman also notes the lack of attention paid to civil wars until the West began to intervene in them during the 1990s, and how the boundaries between peace and war, between the military, the civilian, and the criminal are becoming increasingly blurred.

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Friedman turns his eye on the future, offering a forecast of where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.

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A vivid, engrossing tour of the often unfamiliar terrain of cyberspace, introducing us to the scientists, executives, and public servants who have learned through hard experience how government agencies and private firms can fend off cyber threats.

Print Book; also available as an ebook

The startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists.

eBook

Garry Kasparov's 1997 chess match against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue was a watershed moment in the history of technology. Kasparov reveals his astonishing side of the story, describing how it felt to strategize against an implacable, untiring opponent with the whole world watching, and recounts the history of machine intelligence through the microcosm of chess, considered by generations of scientific pioneers to be a key to unlocking the secrets of human and machine cognition.

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A technology expert describes the ever-increasing role of artificial intelligence in weapons development, the ethical dilemmas these weapons pose, and the potential threat to humanity.Artificial intelligence is playing an ever-increasing role in military weapon systems. Going beyond the bomb-carrying drones used in the Afghan war, the Pentagon is now in a race with China and Russia to develop "lethal autonomous weapon systems" (LAWS).

eBook

Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives--from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture--can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces.

Print Book

The extraordinary story of the most consequential campaign of the Pacific War- the U.S. Fifth Fleet's seizure of the Marianas, a relentless deployment of overwhelming force on air, land, and sea that opened the path to total victory over Japan and established a new state of the art in warfare- the first use of the forerunners of today's SEALs; the emergence of massive cross-hemispheric expeditionary operations; the flowering of American naval aviation and carrier power; and the secret training of Marianas-based air crews who would first unleash nuclear fire.

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Covers battle tactics at sea from the age of fighting sail to the present, with emphasis on trends, constants, and variables. Emphasizes combat data, including how hitting and damage rates and maneuvering have been conducted to achieve an advantage over the centuries. Highlights the current swift advances in unmanned vehicles, artificial intelligence, cyber warfare in peace and war, and other effects of information warfare, and how they are changing the ways battles at sea will be fought and won.

On Order

From the time of the Greeks and the Persians clashing in the Mediterranean, sea power has determined world power. To an extent that is often underappreciated, it still does. Admiral Stavridis takes us on a tour of the world's oceans from the admiral's chair, showing us how the geography of the oceans has shaped the destiny of nations, and how naval power has in a real sense made the world we live in today, and will shape the world we live in tomorrow.

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A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of robotics today, debunking commonly held myths and exploring the rapidly changing relationships between humans and machines. Mindell takes us to extreme environments-high atmosphere, deep ocean, and outer space-to reveal where the most advanced robotics already exist.

Print Book; also available as an ebook

Needing one person who could help him grapple with the enormous strategic consequences of the war both at home and abroad, Roosevelt made Leahy the first presidential chief of staff. This biography illuminates the admiral's influence on the most crucial and transformative decisions of WWII and the early Cold War.

eBook

The story of enlisted Marines at the beginning of World War II, a rough-and-ready tangle of guys from America's cities and farms and reservations. Led by a tough veteran sergeant, these soldiers band together to emerge as part of one of the most elite fighting forces in the world.

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Georgia Governor Zell Miller calls for a return to the values he learned as a young Marine Corps recruit: neatness, responsibility, persistence, discipline, shame, brotherhood, courage, achievement, punctuality, respect, pride, and loyalty.

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Introduces the reader to his early Marine career; adventure filled years that earned him the name "Robo-Grunt"; from men who don't offer accolades easily. Kasal uses his experience climbing the ranks to illustrate how Marines grow, and how they are shaped by the uncompromising attitudes of the officers and non-coms charged with turning young Marines into tigers.

Ebook

Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up--and definitely not the infantry. But now that he's in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training is harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn't kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.

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In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation's history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty were also the casualties of war.

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