Silas,

You ask:
Without wanting to sound like I'm asking to be spoon fed, are there are authors that you know of who have covered the historical civil military practices well?
Somewhere on SWC we have looked at the Imperial era, IIRC around the role of Political Agents; less certainly I think the PRSU @ Bradford have too. In the UK in Afghanistan thread there was a reference to pre-Helmand deployment, in 2006, that experts had advised against such a deployment. There are a coule of threads on PRT too.

Second:
do you feel that the UK has swung back away from PRT use more recently? Are we more focussed on training the ANA/ANP now?
The PRTs originally were quite small, military dominated and from my armchair focussed on establishing good relations with everyone willing to talk. Then came quite small development projects. Helmand as we learnt quickly was not a hospitable place and PRT concept IMHO waned. Somehow DFID, FCO and others embarked on projects that defy understanding. Reconstruction: a children's park, a road to nowhere and best of all supplying farmers with fertiliser in the right chemical mix that bombs could be made. Have a look at the comments on: http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.com/ awhile back.

Training Afghan security forces? That is a completely different issue, which again from my armchair was not a PRT role.