Suggested books for Company Level Leaders

[pjmunson]

My two cents:

-I have to disagree with Schmedlap's suggestion of "The Arab Mind." Even with his caveat, I still think that the book is garbage for several reasons. The book is old, stereotypical, poorly supported, and biased. Yes, there are a lot of instances where people live up to Patai's stereotypes, but it throws people on the wrong track in trying to figure the Arabs out. Instead of Patai's virtual craniology approach, talking about swaddling, breastfeeding, etc, based on very old anthropological research of villages that have changed drastically since the 20s, we should be teaching military leaders to look for more concrete reasons to understand current behaviors. Why? Because if I can link the behaviors to concrete reasons, you can better figure out how to affect them. In its stead, I'd suggest Nydell's "Understanding Arabs" which covers a lot of the same ground with much more reasonable support for the conclusions. Furthermore, I'd challenge you to find many Lts who would actually get all the way through "The Arab Mind." It is a long and painful read, even if you buy into it completely. I wrote an article for the Jan 2006 Marine Corps Gazette that goes into more details on this topic if anyone is interested ("Cultural Education and the Reading Program").

-Afghanistan: I liked Rashid's "Descent into Chaos." It does a good job, I thought, of putting recent events in Afghanistan into a broader regional context that shows the complexity of the interests there, especially WRT Pakistan. I am not as well read on Afghanistan as the Arab world, though, so I may be missing a lot here.

-"The Goal": The book makes valid points, but I'd skim through it to find them. There is a lot of extraneous stuff in it. Naval aviation has based an effort to lean 6 sigma its ops on the Goldratt Institutes philosophies, so my CO had key officers in the squadron read it. (Goldratt is the author of "The Goal")

-For non-military leadership, anyone have comments on "The Powers to Lead" by Nye? I started reading it and it seemed decent, but didn't get far as I had to shift to some other projects.

-And for the Iraq suggestion: Here's the plug, so break out the daggers. I wrote a book, "Iraq in Transition: The Legacy of Dictatorship and the Prospect for Democracy" when I found that there was nothing out there as a single source read on what I thought I wanted to know about Iraq. In it, I tried to boil down all of the best sources on Iraq (with extensive citations) and cover what I thought was important for military officers, policymakers, etc, to know about the country's recent history and current events there. Someone recommended Hashim's book, which is a very useful source and was cited in my book. He also endorsed my book, which covers up to the beginning of 2009. There's only been one independent review of my book so far, as it is pretty new, but you can take a look at it on Amazon and decide for yourself. It may not be perfect for company grade, as it doesn't get into local specifics as much as national politics, but it does cover a lot of ground generally about Shi'a politcs, Sunni tribes, Sadr, the constitution, etc.

(Added by moderator) Link to book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Iraq-Transitio.../dp/1597973009