Milfag Reading

[Anonymous No.11019794]

Hey, /lit/. I’m a cadet at a US service academy and I want to read. What are some good books for officers?

[Anonymous No.11019810]

>>11019794
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutarch

[Anonymous No.11019950]

>>11019794
Australian Defence Force Academy graduate (Class of '12) here. I can personally recommend:

Fiction:
> Starship Troopers (This is a must-read, however - take it with a grain of salt, it's very cheerful and obvious scifi, not fucking brutal realism)
> All Quiet on the Western Front
> Vietnam books (e.g. The Things They Carried, The Odd Angry Shot [Aussie], The Short Timers [basis for Full Metal Jacket] and The Phantom Blooper
> Hemmmmingway - For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms
> Iliad and Odyssey if you're into all that heroism of war stuff. (I was, but am now a bit too experienced to get a hard-on for it it)
> Master and Commander, Hornblower, Sharpe, Biggles etc. - all that shit's fun
> War and Peace (duh)
> Moby Dick (this is a good book for reading on long waiting periods during training exercises. Obviously not military but it's a got a good atmosphere and pacing for that stuff).

Personal Accounts:
> Generation Kill (fucking fantastic book)
> Jarhead
> Bravo Two Zero (Andy McNabb is full of bullshit, and some of it might as well be fiction, but fuck it, it's entertaining)
I tend to steer clear of all those trashy "Team of Warriors - seven leadership lessons from Gen. Selfpromoting McPoliticalcareer" books

Non-fiction and doctrine :
> Clausewitz, On War (yes, really. Read it fucker).
> All the relevant service doctrine you can get your hands on, read it! Read it!
> ----- Classics for your branch
> Navy: Mahan, Corbett
> Army: Liddell-Hart, Jomini, Rommel's "Infantry Tactics", Guderian's Achtung Panzer [for Armoured],
> Air Force: Douhet's "Control of the Air", anything Billy Mitchell
> Stalingrad, Spain, etc. by Anthony Beevor, good historian
> The Accidental Guerilla by David Kilcullen

Philosophy/Politics:
> Stoics as anon mentioned above
> Foucault (I am not kidding, he is good at examining power relationships, this is useful for an officer)
> Hegel (this is quite a fucking thing, but if you can read almost any Hegel at all it will inform your views on Clausewitz)
> Chomsky. Again, not memeing. Even if you're not a lefty, he is worth a read to explain the real nature of geopolitical decisionmaking. I read him in my first year because a mate had it and it was all we had to read for a week of barracks duty
> All that basic existentialism shit like Sartre and Camus. I found it useful for dealing with the "what the fuck am I doing? Why does the system make no fucking sense?" moments in military life.

[Anonymous No.11020624]

>>11019794
bamp desu

[CumLord69 !9skJ1oSTiI No.11020635]

Ready Player One

[Anonymous No.11020655]

>>11019794

War Is A Racket.

Get out of that shit whilst you still can, you cuckold.

[Anonymous No.11020908]

Survival or Hegemony by Noam Chomsky

[Anonymous No.11020928]

>>11019794
Kaputt by Malaparte

[Anonymous No.11020962]

>>11019950
I forgot to mention another two classics of the genre: "MASH, A Novel About Three Army Doctors" (yes, basis for the TV show) and The Good Soldier Svejk (about rhymes with spike), which is the hilarious tale of a soldier bumbling about WWI Austro-Hungarian Army.

[Anonymous No.11021364]

>>11019794
Kipling, also Flashman (very British but oh well we burnt your White House)

[Anonymous No.11021495]

>>11019794
pretty good suggestions in here. I would recommend more historical stuff though as well. Biographies of great men and leaders such as Napoleon, Alexander, Caesar just to name the most basic few. Of course there aren't much "practical" military things you can learn from these but they sure as hell are inspiring and everyone can learn something from these great men.

[Anonymous No.11021580]

>>11020908
"Hegemony or Survival" overuses "quotes" so much that it becomes "painful to read".

[Anonymous No.11022109]

>>11019950
>Jarhead
civilianfag here. can confirm that this is a very well-written book and gets a bad rap from the movie.
In it, Swofford mentions that the USMC has curated reading concerning the corps and general military history, I assume it's all readily googlable.

[Anonymous No.11023266]

>>11019794
countering >>11020655 I for one appreciate your service anon.

[Anonymous No.11023374]

>>11023266
I don't mind soldiers but people like you make me sick

[Anonymous No.11024496]

>>11023266

You're a cuckold too. "I appreciate your service, member of the military industrial complex that furthers shit"

Good job. I hope we get nuked.

[Anonymous No.11024544]

>>11019950
>Australian Defence Force Academy graduate (Class of '12) here.

[Anonymous No.11024563]

>>11024544
(Me on the left)

[Anonymous No.11024601]

>>11019794
unironically probably this

[Anonymous No.11024640]

>>11019794
I assume there are books about this guy, but his wiki will give you a good idea the organization you're working for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler