What Are You Currently Reading? 2009

[TT]

Carl,

I would recommend Keith B. Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corp’s Development of Small Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940 (2000) as possibly of interest to you. Focus's more on the institutional learning than on the 'small wars' themselves, and lessons derived from those wars, though.

TT

[CR6]

Carl,

I would recommend Keith B. Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corp’s Development of Small Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940 (2000)

2nd that recommendation.

Also Jon Hoffman's bios of Chesty Puller and "Red Mike" Edson have excellent sections on USMC operations in Haiti and Nicaragua.

[Tukhachevskii]

Though not a fan of alternate/counter-factual histories in general I picked up P. G. Tsouras (Ed), Cold War Hot: Alternative Decisions of the Cold War Pub. 2003and to my surprise actually found it quite interesting. There are excellent short articles on the invasion of North Vietnam by US forces; the destruction of the Red Army in Operation Red Lightning (an ingenious plan to drop sub-munitions containing alcohol from rockets fired by MLRS launchers) which renders the Krasnaya Armee completely immobile/legless (literally); also chapters on the Sino-Soviet nuclear exchange of the 60s; and the Soviet DPRK victory in the Korean Conflict. Of particular interest to SWC readers wll be the article on Soviet Victory in Afghanistan which leads to an Indo-Pakistan war and an article on how the US could have won Vietnam. Fascinating if only to remind us of what B. H. Liddel-Hart called 'the personal factor in war'. (Also, there's a rather witty footnote regarding powerpoint...'How did Patton manage Cobra without it?")

Links added:http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Hot-A.../dp/185367530X or http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-War-Hot...8235872&sr=8-1

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

U.S. Marines and Irregular Warfare, 1898-2007 (Anthology and Selected Bibliography) by Stephen S. Evans.

[carl]

Gentlemen:

thank you for the recommendations. and thanks in advance if there are more.
now i must get busy and send money to amazon.

[CR6]

When you're middle-aged with four kids, Saturday nights are kinda slow, so thanks for the research project Carl.

Check out this website: sandinorebellion.com

As well as this 1967 American Heritage article

and lastly, you can search the USMC Gazette archives for a variety of small wars articles, to include a 1928 contribution written by then CAPT Mike Edson on his conduct of the Coco River patrol. Articles are $4.00 a pop; however you choose from a variety of levels of access which allow you to pay less per article.

Also, George Clark's With the Old Corps in Nicaragua.

[Van]

Al-Qa'ida's Doctrine for Insurgency: Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin's "A Practical Course for Guerrilla War" by Norman Cigar.

Interesting stuff. Norman Cigar's analysis of the document, the contextual elements of the document, and discussion of the implications of on-line insurgency doctrine is thought provoking. Al Muqrin's taxinomy of wars is intriguing (Conventional, Total, Cold, and Unconventional), and merits further consideration also.

Al addresses war from strategic to tactical levels, and provides a look at the opposition's perceptions of conflict.

Also reading Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series.