Army reading list: Good but a bit of a hole where Iraq and Afghanistan used to be

I think the new
Army reading list is one of the best I've seen. It is more than the usual
greatest hits collection. It has some of those (Stephen
Ambrose and Once an Eagle, for
example) but also Carlo
D'Este's Eisenhower, H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty, and Jorg
Muth's Command Culture. It even
has a couple of good books on the Korean War-Fehrenbach's This Kind of War and Appleman's East
of Chosin.

It is a surprisingly balanced list -- the Civil War, World War
I, World War II, the Korean War and the post-9/11 wars are all well
represented. But I couldn't help but think that the Iraq
section was a little weak. If nothing else, I would have included Jim
Frederick's Black
Hearts. 

It also is interesting to compare the chief of staff's list
to that of
the junior officers. There is some overlap, but the younger officers' list
feels slightly more serious to me -- more Rommel and infantry, less Starfish and Spider (which may be a great book, for all I know -- I
have not read it -- but to me it sounds like a song by Prince). Instead of pop
culture bizness books, I'd recommend something about how expert leaders operate
under stress, such as Gary Klein's Sources
of Power: How People Make Decisions.   

Also, given that we are on the edge of a large
demobilization following a war, I think the list should nod to the issue of the
vet returning to society, perhaps with Jonathan Shay's Odysseus
in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.