Quote Originally Posted by Tukhachevskii View Post
John Buchan, Greenmantle. A work of fiction which, IMO, contains more words of wisdom than will be found in your average, bog standard, academic tome.
Concur. It's orld Class fiction. It's excellent. My other favourite in this vein is Rogue Male.

Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory. I first read this during my undergraduate studies and, like most fresh faced and easily impressed layabouts, was bowled over by his verbose and self-important proclamations. Though still a valuable study of the development and conceptual foundations of Soviet/Russian deep operations theory (if anything this is its saving grace) I am not surprised that the IDF found his recent theory of SOD (Systematic Operational Design) so hard to digest that they spat it out in favour of a more traditional emphasis on "actual" military art in their recent Gaza campaign which paid dividends.
Sorry, but IMO, this book is garbage. He gets it all wrong. He doesn't seem to understand the dissonance between "Deep Battle" theory and actual practice. Big ideas, with little else to support them. All the big ideas fall over when faced with actual operational conditions.
Naveh also plays very fast and loose with the historical record.
Read Nikolas Zetterling rebuttal of Naveh if you can find it. I have a copy, if you PM me your e-mail.