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The Human Face of War by Dr. Jim Storr

An important new book on military theory and history by British defense expert Dr. Jim Storr, a retired Lt. Colonel, King’s Regiment and an instructor at the UK Defence Academy, was reviewed in Joint Forces Quarterly ( hat tip Wilf Owen) by Col. Clinton J. Acker III:

The Human Face of War

….Surveying an array of disciplines including history, psychology, systems theory, complexity theory and philosophy, Storr (a former British officer) looks at what a theory of combat should include, then provides one. He goes on to apply that theory to the design of organizations, staffs, leadership, information management and the creation of cohesion in units. In doing so, he takes on many currently popular theories such as Effects-Based Operations, the observe-orient-decide-act loop, the use of postmodern theory and language.

….Storr’s position is best summed up with this passage:”Critically, military theory should not be a case of ‘this is the right course of action’ but rather ‘doing this will probably have beneficial outcome’

I have not read this book, as it is new and not yet released over here but I have to stop here and comment that the ability to make effective, reasonable, probablilistic estimates based on uncertain or incomplete information is perhaps one of the most important cognitive skills for strategic thinking. This applies whether we are discussing decision making in business, sports, warfare or games of strategy.

….After developing his precepts in the first three chapters, Storr uses the rest of the book to deal with the specifics about how to apply those precepts to “Tools and Models”, “Shock and Surprise”, “Tactics and Organizations”, “Commanding the Battle”, “The Soul of the Army” ( a fascinating discussion of leadership styles) and “Regulators and Ratcatchers”….The discussion in these chapters presents a superb treatise on the use of examples and counterexamples to support points of view. A single counterexample is not sufficient to falsify an argument, for there are no absolutes. Rather we are looking for patterns that appear better than others…”

Read the rest here.

The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama by Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman – just arrived in my mailbox yesterday. Flipped through it today and scanned the index; it looks like a book that would appeal to both “political” bloggers, including Nixon aficianados and the security-defense-foreign policy types who compose a large segment of the readership here.

This year I decided to keep track of all the books I read and see what conclusions I could draw from that experience. I learned a number of interesting things.

First, I did not read nearly as many books cover to cover that I thought I would, though in fairness some of them were a) large and b) ‘hard”. Those I had to read for a grad program were also tedious in the sense of often being composed in the worst kind of academic jargon being overused to convey relatively simple arguments. That said, I could probably have read more than I did. Partly, the problem was a tight schedule and partly it was a case of my reading time being taken consumed more by blogs, PDFs, email, listservs, e-zines and news. All useful but not the same thing as deep reading provided by books.

Secondly, the variety of reading material was not as diverse as I’d have liked, though that is unfortunately the nature of formal programs of study. By definition they are narrow and drill down. I need to add more science and more literature to my repetoire.

Without further ado, my list:

Classics and Ancient History:

The Anabasis of Cyrus by Xenophon ( Wayne Ambler, trans.).    
On War by Carl von Clausewitz (Michael Howard, Peter Paret, trans.)
Caesar’s Commentaries On The Gallic War by Julius Caesar
Alexander the Great by Paul Cartledge
How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy

War, National Security, Military History and Strategy (Modern):

Great Powers: America and the World After Bush by Thomas P.M. Barnett
Threats in the Age of Obama by Michael Tanji (ed.)
The Culture of War by Martin van Creveld
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P.W. Singer
The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security by Grant T. Hammond
Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton
The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer
The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America by Douglas E. Schoen
This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America’s Most Violent Gang by Samuel Logan

Islamic World:

Engaging the Muslim World by Juan Cole
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr

Society, Arts, Literature and Science:

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
Fatal Revenant: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Give a Little: How Your Small Donations Can Transform Our World by Wendy Smith

Educational Theory, Learning and Schools:

Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality by Charles Murray
Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith
What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action by Robert J. Marzano
Teaching What Matters Most: Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievement by Richard Strong
Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work by Robert E. Eaker
Getting Results With Curriculum Mapping by Heidi Hayes Jacobs
SuperVision and Instructional Leadership: A Developmental Approach by Carl D. Glickman
Pretending to Be Normal: Living With Asperger’s Syndrome by Liane Holliday Willey
Dealing with Difficult Parents by Todd Whitaker
The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
School, Family, and Community Partnerships : Preparing Educators and Improving Schools by Joyce Levy Epstein
American Public School Finance by William A. Owings
Ethics Of School Administration by Kenneth Strike
Ethical Leadership in Schools: Creating Community in an Environment of Accountability by Kenneth Strike
Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Educational Issues by James Noll
Teachers and the Law by Louis Fischer
Practicing the Art of Leadership: A Problem-Based Approach to Implementing the ISLLC Standards by Reginald Leon Green
On Common Ground: The Power of Professional Learning Communities by Roland S. Barth
Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan
Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom: Strategies and Tools for Responsive Teaching by Carol A. Tomlinson
Studying Educational and Social Policy: Theoretical Concepts and Research Methods by Ronald H. Heck
Data Analysis 2nd by Victoria L. Bernhardt

Currently Reading Now:

The Call of Nepal: My Life In the Himalayan Homeland of Britain’s Gurkha Soldiers by J.P. Cross
Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count by Richard E. Nisbett
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism by Howard Bloom

Related:

I also make use of a Kindle            

In a burst of raw self-interest – and also a little love for my blogfriends – these books make nifty gifts for any war nerd or deep thinker on your Christmas list:

The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War – Mark Safranski (Ed.)

Threats in the Age of Obama – Michael Tanji (Ed.)

Great Powers: America and the World After Bush – Thomas P.M. Barnett

Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization – John Robb

Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd – Frans Osinga

The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism  by Howard Bloom

Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count  by Richard Nisbett

Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld  by Jeffrey Carr

This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America’s Most Violent Gang  by Samuel Logan

Full Disclosure:

In copmpliance with new Federal regulations of dubious Constitutional merit, I hearby declare ZP does not accept money for publishing reviews or any paid advertising. Courtesy review copies were extended to me by authors or publishers acting on behalf of Sam Logan, Tom Barnett and Jeff Carr. I edited the first book in this post and was a contributing author to the second one. All of the books, with the exception of Cyber Warfare have been the subject of prior reviews or posts at ZP.

I’ve enjoyed a sporadic conversation with Steve Pressfield , author of Gates of Fire and Killing Rommel, ever since he started his Tribes site. While most of our discussions had to do with COIN, tribalism, ancient history and Afghanistan, Steve is also generous with his time and advice with those who aspire to become better writers. Pressfield distilled his philosophy of writing, learned from the school of hard knocks, into a short handbook, The War of Art which I heartily recommend. Steve also features a “Writing Wednesdays” as a weekly tutorial in the writer’s craft and the acquisition of a professional mindset.

In the spirit of “Writing Wednesday”, Steve invited me to pose three questions to him based on my impressions of The War of Art. Here are my questions and Steve’s answers:

ZP: You write in The War of Art about “the muse”and Socrates‘ “heaven-sent madness”. It sounds very much like the “flow” described by creativity theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Does the intensity of that experience ever lead the artist astray ?

SP: In my experience, Mark, the writing process bounces back and forth between two poles.  One is the let-‘er-rip mode, which could be called “flow,” or “Dionysian.”  That’s the one when the Muse possesses a writer and he just goes with it.  But yes, as you suggest, it can lead you astray.  It’s the like the great ideas you have at three in the morning after two too many tequilas.  This mode has to be balanced by a saner-head mode, which sometimes to me almost feels like a different person–an editor, a reviser.  That’s really when you put yourself in imagination in the place of the reader and ask yourself, as you’re reading the stuff that this “other guy” wrote: “Does this make any sense?  Is this any good?  Have I got it in the right place, in the right form?  Should I cut it, expand it, modify it, dump it entirely.”  Then you become cold-blooded and professional.  You get ruthless with your own work.  This is the time, I think, when “formula” wisdom can help, when you can ask yourself questions like, “What is my inciting incident?” or “What is my Act Two mid-point.”  Not when you’re in the flow, or you’ll censor yourself and second-guess yourself.  But now, when you’re rationally evaluating what you produced when you were in flow.

This back-and-forthing, I imagine, would be true in any artistic or entrepreneurial venture.  It’s great to let it rip and really get down some wild, skatting jazz riffs.  But then we have to come back and ask ourselves, “Is this working for the audience?  Is this working for the work itself?”

ZP: Amateurs reach a tipping point where they “Turn pro”. Is turning professional more from innate character or from the lessons of experience?

SP: Some people are born “pro.”  I have two friends, identical twins, who are both tremendous producers of excellent work and they’ve never suffered a minute of Resistance in their lives.  The lucky bastards.  For the rest of us though (at least this is my experience), only after many painful hard knocks … really when it becomes simply too excruciating to continue living as an amateur (and thereby suffering the agonies of never completing anything, always screwing up, forever feeling inadequate in our own eyes and just plain not respecting ourselves) do we finally, out of sheer emotional self-preservation, say to ourselves, “This crap has gotta stop!  We gotta get our act together!”

ZP: Artists run straight into hierarchies, filled with gatekeepers, between ourselves and a goal. Go through or go around?

SP: There’s an axiom in Hollywood that if you write a truly great script, it will not go unrecognized.  I think this is true.  What I mean by that is that gatekeepers can be our friends.  They can open gates as well as close them.  In fact, I vote for jettisoning the term “gatekeeper.”  It’s negative and self-defeating–and it’s an insult, I think, to the editors, agents, publishers and development executives whose agenda is not to exclude us, the artists.  In fact they’d like nothing more than to discover fresh talent, a hot new manuscript, a great pitch or biz proposal.  In my own experience, I got shot down again and again when my stuff wasn’t ready and wasn’t good.  But once I had done the work and elevated my material to the professional level, I found open doors and helping hands.

All that is not to say that “going around” can’t be a good idea too.  Look at Seth Godin, who’s the poster boy for damning the torpedoes and taking his stuff straight to the marketplace with incredible success.  In my own career though–now that you’ve made me think about it, Mark–I realize I’ve always gone the traditional route.  And the “gatekeepers” I’ve met have become, almost within exception, great friends and allies–and I’ve wound up helping them, in other ways, almost as much as they’ve helped me.

Thanks Steve!

Were it not for guest posts, November would have seemed like I went on hiatus 🙂  Normal blogging will resume in a few weeks.

I did find time to pick up a few new books to read in the late hours of the night, one of which will be the subject of a book review by a new guest poster.

The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism by Howard Bloom

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America  by Rick Perlstein

The only thing these three tomes have in common is that the authors have a penchant for contradicting conventional wisdom, at least to a degree. 

Howard Bloom is an offbeat, pop science to pop culture master of horizontal thinking whose earlier work, Global Brain, I very much enjoyed and highly recommend. Bloom’s intellectual reach is first rate and he is one of the few writers who can take very difficult concepts from wildly disparate fields and tie them together for a lay audience with comprehensible analogies and anecdotes .

I put Vali Nasr’s The Shia Revival on my list back after the high praise Thomas P.M. Barnett gave Nasr in his book, Great Powers – in my experience, Tom does not hand out comments of “brilliant” all that often ( Great Powers, BTW, is also a “must read” book for those interested in strategy and geoeconomics). I am approximately 80 pages in to The Shia Revival and I will say that as a writer, Nasr does not waste time getting to key points in explaining his subject – concise but not simplified.

Rick Perlstein, while far to the Left, has the uncommon quality among leftwingers of working very, very hard at the scholarship of attempting to understand conservatism and leading conservatives ( must be a legacy of attending the University of Chicago). Much like Orangemen in Ulster, eavesdropping on a Catholic mass, I suspect the essence of conservatism eludes Perlstein, but at least he takes the ideas seriously.  That Richard Nixon is Perlstein’s subject is an added draw, since Nixon’s foreign policy was an area of historical research for me. Very interested to see how Perlstein’s take on Richard Nixon compares to that of Robert Dallek and Richard Reeves.

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear….”