The Reading List of Colonel Thomas X. Hammes
The Armed Forces Journal cover story features Colonel T.X. Hammes giving an an “outside the box” reading list to change traditional thinking in defense circles:
Although the wider academic and business communities are coming to grips with the fact that many of these advances are changing the way we understand the world, the defense industry does not seem to see this as an issue. We still tend to view the world as responding to linear approaches applied by bureaucratic entities.
Fortunately, over the past couple of decades, a number of books have provided thought-provoking new theories of how
the world works. Unfortunately, these theories do not align with the planning processes we use in the defense industry. The first step in fixing our planning processes is to examine how science’s understanding of reality is changing.The authors of these works highlight aspects of how the world has changed. This forces us to change how we frame problems, how we organize to deal with them and even how to get the best out of our people. For instance, if one still saw the world as a hierarchy, then one looked for the “leadership” of the Iraqi insurgency in 2003. Yet if one saw the world as a network in which emergent intelligence is a key factor, then one quickly saw the networked insurgent entities as they evolved an emergent strategy in Iraq. Our ability to adjust to the rapidly changing future security environment will, to a large degree, depend on our ability to understand the world as it is rather than as we have been taught to understand it. Reading these 12 books should help.
Here is the list, and it is a good one. I’ve read several, have some of the other books in my “antilibrary” and a few are new to me. You can go to the article to get some commentary regarding each book by Dr. Hammes:
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means
Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design ( U.S. Army pamphlet)
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why
Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Helix Books)
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
An excellent list but one to which I think we need to add a few more. While any comments are welcome, I suggest that readers also chime in and nominate a couple ( 1 or 2) worthy reads that fit the spirit of Col. Hammes’ intent. My nominations are Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
UPDATE:
Great recs are already in the comment section! I will start putting them together as a linked set of ” Reader’s Reading List”. Note also Smitten Eagle has posted up.
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:14 am
My suggestion would be <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/1594201536/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217725788&sr=1-1>Here Comes Everybody</a> by Clay Shirky. It’s similar to the Starfish and the Spider as it mainly focuses on the reasons decentralized networks form and how they come together, particularly the underlying economic aspect.
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:43 am
<u>War Before Civilization</u> by Lawrence Kelley. Because a very long view supported by archaeological and anthropological data helps move debates about human nature into useful conclusions. And thinking about the future always involves making assumptions about human nature.
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<u>Moneyball</u> by Michael Lewis. Because sometimes it helps to think about how strategists have exploited changing conditions in other spheres.
August 3rd, 2008 at 5:42 am
These suggestions seem obvious, but Malcolm Gladwell books Tipping Point and Blink should be a staple any any reading list. Especially considering the standards given by Colonel T.X. Hammes.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
Dammit, I’m breaking your rule for the number of books.
I have to take a bifurcation and dynamic systems course next year with a bunch of physics students, so I’ve been asking around for books to lead me gently into it (probably knowing the foundational math by then, but probably not being too up to scratch on the physics concepts). One book that has been mentioned once or twice is ‘Explaining Chaos’ by Peter Smith.
I think the most under read book of the last year is ‘From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation’ by Michael Kenney. That book is brilliant. It analyses competing adaptive networks and how drug or terrorist networks ‘learn’ and adapt to police and military social networks. I have his original paper (that turned into the book) if anyone wants it.
Duncan Watts is also good for social networks.
I’ve heard good things about Batterman’s ‘The Devil is in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence’. The author supposedly lays out a reasoning framework for dealing with lack of details in applied maths and physics. It is on my tobuy list.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
ZEN! You should have emailed me about this!
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
[…] Hammes list is here. Zen wrote about it here, […]
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Network Power: The Social Dynamics Of Globalization by David Singh Grewal
Perceptive and detailed explanation of the impact and role of networks in globalization from regions to small villages, perhaps vital to comprehend the intersection of policies, traditions and trends on the local level.
Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology Of Disaster
Disasters of all types viewed through the prism of how culture, attitudes and conceptions can determine their impact and role in changing conditions from the short-term to the long view.
August 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Getting Real by the founders of 37 Signals. It’s about a new approach to software development, but the 91 short essays have the additional effect of opening your mind to new ways of doing lots of things.
The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman by Takuan Soho, translation by William Scott Wilson. Some amazing insights into the difference between the Right Mind and the Confused Mind, where a warrior should put his mind, and much more, written during the time of feudal Japan.
August 4th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Black Swan would be an obvious one, and Goedel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Interesting – When I add these to my (ever growing) Amazon wish list, about half of them show up as "other people also bought these titles" – the power of Col. Hammes!
August 4th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
This is a great list (Zen’s and from the commentators)!
August 4th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
The anti-library grows ever larger.
You guys suggest books too fast for me to read (And I read pretty fast).
Adding a little fiction to the pile of non-fiction because entertainment is just another way of saying creatively educated.
Daemon by Leinad Zeraus
Halting State by Charles Stross
Both are unique visions of warfare in the near term laced with military/intelligence agency applications for MMORPGs, darknets, Augmented Reality and other things people play games with now, but could well be the platforms for fighting conflicts in the future.
August 4th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
These are the books I took for my South American trip:
Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Highly recommended comp edited by Iraq and Afghan advisers)
Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (Case studies on grand strategy from Athens to modern-day Israel–geographical, cultural, and political scope of pieces are incredible)
City Fights: Urban Combat from World War II to Vietnam (Case studies on urban warfare, heavy conventional bias but fascinating interpretation of old cases–for example, analyst looks at how Soviets used emergent organization in Stalingrad defense)
Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers (Edited compilation of papers on netwar, gangs, and global insurgency)
Best of Intentions (A history of Kofi Annan’s tenure at the UN and how the institution changed as a result of the Iraq war–very nuanced look, as good as anything Edward Luck has written about UN)