SgtMaj of the Marine Corps Reading List
Title: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Author: Jonathan Shay
Book Description:
Examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the Iliad was written 27 centuries ago, it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets.
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Title: Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era
Author: James M. McPherson
Book Description:
Recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the American Civil War, is a chronicle of the war itself, and includes the author’s view on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and […]
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Title: CARNAGE AND CULTURE: LANDMARK BATTLES IN THE RISE OF WESTERN POWER
Author: Victor Hanson
Book Description:
Examines 9 landmark battles from ancient to modern times from Salamis, where outnumbered Greeks devastated the slave army of Xerxes, to Cortes’s conquest of Mexico to the Tet offensive. Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or superior technology, the author argues that it is in fact Western culture and values–the tradition of dissent, the […]
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Title: DEFEAT INTO VICTORY: BATTLING JAPAN IN BURMA AND INDIA 1942-1945
Author: Field Marshal Viscount William Slim
Book Description:
This detailed autobiography by British Field Marshal Viscount Slim (1891-1970) is a first-person account of the retaking of Burma during World War II. In this book, Slim honestly examines his decisions as a leader and consequences of those decisions, both good and bad. Defeat into Victory is widely regarded as a classic memoir of high […]
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