Call for Professional Reading Lists

[William F. Owen]

I'm reading Maurice de Saxe's Reveries on the Art of War right now (thanks Ken ), and one of the things that is helping get a handle on it is knowing a fair bit about the music at the time - both the great stuff (e.g. Bach) and some of the hack work.

Ordered it last week, for the same reason.

Guided study can be useful, but it is always important to remember that in such a setting you are being "guided" by someone else's view of what is important. It is a fascinating paradox in that it really helps to have expert guidance in getting a rough picture together, but that picture then limits what you can see. I ran head on into this years ago, and one of my truly great prof's suggested a couple of tactics that I have used ever since then.

Wanna add some detail. This sounds fascinating!

So, start tracking down the works of people who they are arguing with and read their stuff.

Excellent advice. Also where possible, check the actual content of any footnoted references. Books which are PhD thesis re-prints are usually riddled with "errors".

Caution: for all the people who HATE population-centric COIN, this reading list is pretty much geared toward it. It has an amazing collection of very good articles as well. If you want to know what is influencing policy in the US government in Afghanistan it is this reading list.

Can't improve on what Ken said, plus beware reading lists that are being used to further agendas.