It is a dreary day and I am stuck gutting an index as the publisher informed me that having a user friendly, helpful index is not acceptable. Not fun (sigh).

To add to Toms list, some of the central academic works are:

[Health Warning: you are now entering the realm of academic dispute]


Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Cornell, 1984) Neorealist explanation of interwar period

Steven Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War (Cornell, 1991)

Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (ie Malaysia and Vietnam) (Cornell, 1994)

(these are on opposite sides of the question of whether mil orgs require civilian intervention to change or will change on their own).

Organizational Culture

(these include culture as organizational structure – promotion pathways, hierarchy and so on – or as self identity).

Jack Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive (Cornell, 1984) – lead up to WWI

Kimberly Marten Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955-1991 (Princeton 1993)

Peter J. Katzenstein, Culture Norms and National Security (Cornell, 1996)

Elizabeth Keir, Imagining War (Princeton, 1997) Interwar period

Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Cornell, 2005)

(Second health warning: the foregoing are theoretical or theoretical leaning, except Rosen’s book)



Adaptation/Learning (mainly at tactical level)

Michael Doubler, Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-45 (Uni of Kansas Press, 1994)

James Jay Carafano, GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, technology and Winning WWII (Praeger 2006).

(these two are analytical narratives)


Beware, there are other books, and there are many articles as well (including articles that are drawn from the books above).



And not to neglect History (well, more or less history)…..

Williamson Murray and Allan Millett, ed, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge 1996)

Harold R. Winton and David r. Mets, eds, The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918-1941 (Uni of Nebraska Press, 2000)

David E. Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the US Army, 1917-1945 (Cornell, 1998)

Victor David Hanson: Why the West has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam (Faber & Faber, 2001)

And the counter arguments to Hanson:

John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Westview 2003)

J.E. Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts: A History of Battle in classical Antiquity (Yale 2005)

(poli types are not the only ones who engage in internecine fights)


PS. Yes, the interwar period has been flogged to death and then flogged yet again, and then again - and no doubt it will be flogged even further in future.