As he heads out the door as Army Chief of Staff - Gen. Dempsey put out a reading list.
As I mentioned over half a decade on this blog - I love books so much I just want to git nakid and roll around in 'em.
As you ponder that visual again, I'll admit that I am a bit disappointed in his list. I prefer to give people a lot of room to recommend books - but seriously - he has TWO books by Thomas Friedman? Ungh. I'll nod to his list - but really - TWO Friedman? -1.
I like Exum's list better for the record.
Two Friedman and no VDH. Sad.
In any event - you can either follow the link above to the PDF or enjoy the widgets below.
41 minutes ago
21 comments:
VDH shouldn't be used to line a cat litter box-much less as a fit reading material for any one.
So, you've never actually read any of his books.
Is it me or it is just wrong Friedman?
And who is the VDH?
Is it me or it is just wrong Friedman?
And who is the VDH?
Let me guess, Skippy...you hate Max Boot too. Maybe you should just stick with Fareed Zakaria and Anderson Cooper. VDH might be too high octane for you
Monsoon is a good selection, but I really hope that he spends more time learning about the Air Sea battle. Matters a whole lot more in his time than running around chasing Haji's...especially if he is not familliar with it!
It would say a lot more about a leader if, instead of just textbooks, he added a few titles he really liked such as: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Red Storm Rising, Cannery Row, On the Road, Cadillac Desert.
ewok, VDH is Victor Davis Hanson. He's a popular and prolific military historian and he also writes on current events. You can probably get some of his older books pretty cheaply on Amazon. My husband has quite a few of his histories, and I always enjoy his articles at nationalreview.com.
Vince Flynn is my guilty pleasure. One of my brothers gave me the first book in the series and told me that I'd like what happened to the liberal politicians in the story. :)
History will not be kind to Friedman and his band of merry toadies. Dempsey would have been wise to include Hayek on the list as debt will become the dominant national security issue going forward. "The Fatal Conceit"---Genius.
Friedman. Twice. A far-left demagogue. The political indoctrination of our Officer Corps continues.
Skippy,
You should no matter how distatful it is read the opfor's books. Why? To know what they are thinking and to know how they plan, how they draw thier conclusions, how they act and how they speak. If you chose to not read the opfor's book then you are guilty of being close-minded and being bigoted. When it comes to pundits even more so. Saying that you have read a few of their editorials means you understand their thinking means nothing, you need to seriously digest the meat and potatoes of thier brain when they put all those editorials together you can gather a congizate thread of thinking that is leaving their minds and exiting either thier fingers or thier mouths.
I have read books from Molly Ivins to Howard Zinn to Bill Buckley to the Limbaugh brothers and even some of the more extreme like LaRouche. All to better understand why they are the on the scene or referenced to by lesser folks. Again to understand their thought processes and to educate myself without having to depend on others to provide me thier shaded view on the person or their thoughts on the editorialists thoughts.
Oh, I've actually read his "Western Way of War"... excellent piece. He seems to be really big authority on warfare in the ancient Greece though. By coincidence, I'm reading Thucidides "Peloponesian War" right now...
Nah, Skippy's one of them libruls - so enlightened he doesn't need to risk exposing himself to a differing viewpoint.
I'm missing van Creveld's "Supplying War". Every serviceman needs at least a basic understanding of logistics and with Creveld's depiction of the historic development up to and after the paradigm shift in logistics in the late 19th century the groundwork for that understanding is laid.
Instead of Friedman's "Globalisation" opus I'd add "The Box" by Marc Levinson. Understanding modern civilian logistics means understanding the real-economy globalisation and the chapter on Vietnam military logistics nicely tags on to Creveld.
The van Creveld book was a disappointment. It ignored the entire of the American experience, which began almost a full decade before his book's pivotal chapter "When Demi-Gods Rode the Rails".
The ACW was of far greater significance to the development of modern logistics than was anything that happened in 1870-71.
Concur, however, on the Levinson book. Had a number of people tell me that business leaders have all devoured "The Box", while most of them think Friedman's take on globalization is largely nonsense. So "The Box" is in my stack to read, and near the top. Just as soon as I see how things end in the Crimea. :)
I think that the ACW, while significant, was too atypical and not well enough analysed and received in "The Old World" to influence the development of military logistics, unlike the 1870/71 war, so Creveld was IMO right to concentrate there. The WWI plans devolved from analysis of the 1870/71 war and not the ACW.
That doesn't say that there weren't very interesting and admirable feats and developments in military logistics in the ACW, Herman Haupt's and his command's feats in the foremost. WWII Germany and Japan also could have benefitted from analysis of the impact of Confederate industrial inferiority on the wars outcome.
well, failure to see the trends emerging from trenches near Richmond led to the massacre of WW1... while people later started to try to emulate Shermans maneuver warfare in the March to the sea to get rid of the static warfare, with the perfect tool found in the motorization...
I would tell you that the American Civil War was far more than "significant". The sizes of the independently operating armies, the distances, logistics requirements, operational and strategic mobility, all dwarfed anything in the Franco-Prussian War. The sudden and disproportionately large demand for prepared foodstuffs, and the extremely high expenditure and resupply requirements for artillery ammunition should have given both the Allies and Central Powers a taste of what 1914 was to bring. They didn't, and each major power had near-catastrophic artillery ammunition shortages at the strategic level.
No, Europe has never had much to learn from "provincial" America. So in 1914, they proceeded to assault fixed fortifications frontally, against modern musketry and artillery, and the machine gun. Fifty years after Cold Harbor.
In principle I have to agree, the European analysis of the ACW was sorely insufficient. But you also underestimate the Prussians and their experiences e.g. at the "appalling slaughter" of Gravelotte, which led to a modification of tactics and the realisation that the days of frontal assault were over even during the Franco-Prussian war. While some German formations (most infamous in the wrongly glorified "Langemarck" assault by newly formed second or third tier reserve formations) did execute your criticised frontal assault early in WWI those were exceptions and WWI from the beginning saw a steady evolution of infantry assault techniques and tactics on the German side that was based in pre-war programmes.
Nevertheless, what I'm saying in respect to "Supplying War" is that because the analysis of the ACW by the European powers was insufficient Creveld was right to include the Franco-Prussian war whose historical analysis was influential for the wars in his succeeding chapter. This war was also more "transitional" operationally than the ACW (including more old elements such as the Germans mostly living of the land while sieging Paris) as well as more seductive strategically for late 19th/early 20th century military planners, being comparatively "sharp, short & successful", at least for the German states. It is important for the flow of the book, replacing this chapter with an ACW chapter would have made it stand apart from the rest of the book, as the ACW stands somewhat apart from the development of warfare. Whether Creveld should have added some content about the ACW and its insufficient reception is another matter. In the end I have yet to find a better "general overview" history book about military logistics than "Supplying War". It's not a be all and end all but a good start to build a framework of understanding.
<span>No question, the Germans caught onto the tactics of modern infantry and artillery firepower first (with the notable exception you mention).
Their revised infantry tactics of 1917 were a harbinger of the fire and maneuver doctrine of 1939-45. Leavenworth No 4. "The Dynamics of Doctrine", is a fascinating read, if you haven't already.
As for the English, French, Austrians, and Italians, they have little excuse. They each had military advisors on either side of the lines at Cold Harbor, and at Petersburg.
My objection to Van Creveld's lack of treatment of any kind regarding the ACW is that his words come across as if European military leadership were the first to successfully use rail strategically and operationally. In reality, the North and South (with what they had) were well-versed in such methods before the Prussians and Austrian slogged their way to Schleswig-Holstein in 1864.
His is an interesting and iconic work. But that is a major shortcoming. Which is not to say that van Creveld is an arrogant Euro-centric pr*ck, or anything....
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