Military Power
Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle
Political Science
Book Notes
A collection of books I've read, am reading, or plan to read.
The Rise of Unmanned Warfare
Education
Scientists at War
The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research
Business & Economics
When the Heavens Went on Sale
The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach
Biography & Autobiography
Cyber Persistence Theory
Redefining National Security in Cyberspace
Political Science
Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace
Political Science
Age of Deception
Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft
Political Science
Offensive Cyber Operations
Understanding Intangible Warfare
Technology & Engineering
How Data Happened
A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms
Technology & Engineering
Subversion
The Strategic Weaponization of Narratives.
Biography & Autobiography
Total Cold War
Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad
Biography & Autobiography
Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict
Hybrid warfare
The Forgotten Front
Patron-Client Relationships in Counterinsurgency
Political Science
Maoism
A Global History
History
The Logic of Violence in Civil War
Political Science
Winning Without Fighting
Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century
Technology & Engineering
A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics
Political Science
China's Gambit
The Calculus of Coercion
Political Science
The Russian Way of Deterrence
Strategic Culture, Coercion, and War
Political Science
The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Political Science
Emotional Choices
How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy
Political Science
Air Power as a Coercive Instrument
Political Science
Bombing to Win
Air Power and Coercion in War
Political Science
Arms and Influence
Political Science
Strategy in the Missile Age
Technology & Engineering
See It/Shoot It
The Secret History of the CIA's Lethal Drone Program
Political Science
Economic Statecraft
New Edition
Business & Economics
Strategic Narratives
Communication Power and the New World Order
Political Science
When Right Makes Might
Rising Powers and World Order
Political Science
Rethinking the World
Great Power Strategies and International Order
Political Science
War and Change in World Politics
History
After Hegemony
Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy
Business & Economics
Power
A Radical View
Political science
MacArthur's Airman
General George C. Kenney and the War in the Southwest Pacific
Biography & Autobiography
The Bombing War
Europe 1939-1945
Bombing, Aerial
Operational Culture and Air Power
Aeronautics
The First World War
History
The Sea Power of the State
Technology & Engineering
The Strategy Bridge
Theory for Practice
Political Science
The Foundations of the Science of War
Technology & Engineering
Air Power and Armies
History
Strategy
Second Revised Edition
History
Command Of The Air
History
The Art of War
Military art and science
On War
History
The Evolution of Strategy
Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present
Political Science
Every War Must End
History
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
Political Science
Just and Unjust Wars
A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
Political Science
The Landmark Thucydides
History
Why War?
History
Out of the Darkness
The Germans, 1942-2022
Social Science
How to Read a Book
Language Arts & Disciplines
| Cover | Title | Author | Status | Class | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Military Power Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle | Stephen Biddle | complete | 660 | — |
| | The Origins of Victory How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers | Andrew F. Krepinevich | complete | 660 | — |
| | The Rise of Unmanned Warfare | Jacquelyn Schneider, MacDonald | complete | — | — |
| | Transforming Military Power since the Cold War Britain, France, and the United States, 1991–2012 | Theo Farrell, Sten Rynning, Terry Terriff | complete | 660 | — |
| | Flying Camelot The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia | Michael W. Hankins | complete | 660 | — |
| | Scientists at War The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research | Sarah Bridger | complete | 660 | — |
| | Inventing Accuracy A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance | Donald MacKenzie | complete | 660 | — |
| | Learning War The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898–1945 | Trent Hone | complete | 660 | — |
| | Winning the Next War Innovation and the Modern Military | Stephen Peter Rosen | complete | 660 | — |
| | AI, Automation, and War The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex | Anthony King | complete | 660 | — |
| | The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Military-Civil Fusion A New Paradigm for Military Innovation? | Yoram Evron, Richard A. Bitzinger | complete | 660 | — |
| | The Pursuit of Power Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 | William H. McNeill | complete | 660 | — |
| | Rocket Dreams Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race | Christian Davenport | complete | 665 | — |
| | When the Heavens Went on Sale The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach | Ashlee Vance | complete | 665 | — |
| | Original Sin Power, Technology, and War in Outer Space | Bleddyn E. Bowen | complete | 665 | — |
| | Space Piracy Preparing for a Criminal Crisis in Orbit | Marc Feldman, Hugh Taylor | complete | 665 | — |
| | Space Warfare Strategy, Principles and Policy | John J. Klein | complete | 665 | — |
| | Astropolitik Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age | Everett C. Dolman | complete | 665 | — |
| | The Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations | complete | 665 | — | |
| | Weapons in Space Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative | Aaron Bateman | complete | 665 | — |
| | Cyber Persistence Theory Redefining National Security in Cyberspace | Michael P. Fischerkeller, Emily O. Goldman, Richard J. Harknett | complete | 667 | — |
| | Digital Empires The Global Battle to Regulate Technology | Anu Bradford | complete | 667 | — |
| | This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends A True Story | Nicole Perlroth | complete | 667 | — |
| | Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace | Erica D. Lonergan, Shawn W. Lonergan | complete | 667 | — |
| | Age of Deception Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft | Jon R. Lindsay | complete | 667 | — |
| | Offensive Cyber Operations Understanding Intangible Warfare | Daniel Moore | complete | 667 | — |
| | Spin Dictators The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century | Sergei Guriev, Daniel Treisman | complete | 667 | — |
| | World War II Memory and Contested Commemorations in Europe and Russia | Jennifer A. Yoder | complete | 667 | — |
| | How Data Happened A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms | Chris Wiggins, Matthew L. Jones | complete | 667 | — |
| | Subversion The Strategic Weaponization of Narratives. | Krieg, Andreas | complete | 667 | — |
| | Total Cold War Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad | Kenneth Alan Osgood | complete | 667 | — |
| | Russia and the Changing Character of Conflict | Tracey C. German | complete | 644 | — |
| | How ISIS Fights Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt | Omar Ashour | complete | 644 | — |
| | The Forgotten Front Patron-Client Relationships in Counterinsurgency | Walter C. Ladwig III | complete | 644 | — |
| | Afgantsy The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 | Rodric Braithwaite | complete | 644 | — |
| | War From the Ground Up Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics | Emile Simpson | complete | 644 | — |
| | Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958 | David Galula | complete | 644 | — |
| | Revolutionary Warfare How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency | Terrence G. Peterson | complete | 644 | — |
| | Maoism A Global History | Julia Lovell | complete | 644 | — |
| | On the Protracted War | Tse-Tung 1893-1976 Mao | complete | 644 | — |
| | The Logic of Violence in Civil War | Stathis N. Kalyvas | complete | 644 | — |
| | Nonstate Warfare The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias | Stephen Biddle | complete | 644 | — |
| | Winning Without Fighting Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century | Rebecca Patterson, Susan F. Bryant, Ken Gleiman, Mark Troutman | complete | 644 | — |
| | A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics | Tom Long, Thomas Stephen Long | complete | 633 | — |
| | China's Gambit The Calculus of Coercion | Ketian Zhang | complete | 633 | — |
| | The Russian Way of Deterrence Strategic Culture, Coercion, and War | Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky | complete | 633 | — |
| | The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century | Brad Roberts | complete | 633 | — |
| | Emotional Choices How the Logic of Affect Shapes Coercive Diplomacy | Robin Markwica | complete | 633 | — |
| | Air Power as a Coercive Instrument | Daniel Byman, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Ian O. Lesser | complete | 633 | — |
| | Bombing to Win Air Power and Coercion in War | Robert A. Pape | complete | 633 | — |
| | Arms and Influence | Thomas C. Schelling | complete | 633 | — |
| | Strategy in the Missile Age | Bernard Brodie | complete | 633 | — |
| | The Air War Against the Islamic State The Role of Airpower in Operation Inherent Resolve | Becca Wasser, Stacie L. Pettyjohn, Jeffrey Martini, Alexandra T. Evans, Karl P. Mueller, Nathaniel Edenfield, Gabrielle Tarini, Ryan Haberman, Jalen Zeman | complete | 628 | — |
| | See It/Shoot It The Secret History of the CIA's Lethal Drone Program | Christopher J. Fuller | complete | 628 | — |
| | NATO's Gamble Combining Diplomacy and Airpower in the Kosovo Crisis, 1998-1999 | Dag Henriksen | complete | 628 | — |
| | Strategic Air Power in Desert Storm | John Andreas Olsen | complete | 628 | — |
| | The Transformation of American Air Power | Benjamin S. Lambeth | complete | 628 | — |
| | Making the Unipolar Moment U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order | Hal Brands | complete | 628 | — |
| | Euromissiles The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO | Susan Colbourn | complete | 628 | — |
| | Hanoi's War An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam | Lien-Hang T. Nguyen | complete | 628 | — |
| | Powerful and Brutal Weapons Nixon, Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive | Stephen P Randolph | complete | 628 | — |
| | The Limits of Air Power The American Bombing of North Vietnam | Mark Clodfelter | complete | 628 | — |
| | The Heavens and the Earth A Political History of the Space Age | Walter A. McDougall | complete | 628 | — |
| | To Kill Nations American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction | Edward Kaplan | complete | 628 | — |
| | Red Wings Over the Yalu China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea | Xiaoming Zhang | complete | 628 | — |
| | American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950-1953 | Conrad C. Crane | complete | 628 | — |
| | Pacific Power Paradox American Statecraft and the Fate of the Asian Peace | Van Jackson | complete | 632 | Eclectic/critical: layered peace uses realist power, liberal institutions/interdependence, and constructivist norms; not a single-school text. |
| | The Global Cold War Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times | Odd Arne Westad | complete | 632 | Constructivism-adjacent history: Cold War interventions are driven by universalist ideologies, modernity projects, and local identities. |
| | Economic Statecraft New Edition | David A. Baldwin | complete | 632 | Eclectic: bridges realism and liberalism; treats economic statecraft as an instrument of influence through incentives, costs, and signals. |
| | Strategic Narratives Communication Power and the New World Order | Alister Miskimmon, Ben O'Loughlin, Laura Roselle | complete | 632 | Constructivism: strategic narratives, identity, norms, and discourse shape international order and behavior. |
| | When Right Makes Might Rising Powers and World Order | Stacie E. Goddard | complete | 632 | Constructivism: legitimation, rhetoric, resonance, and institutional meaning shape responses to rising powers. |
| | After Victory Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, New Edition | G. John Ikenberry | complete | 632 | Liberalism: liberal institutionalism; durable order comes from institutions, strategic restraint, credible commitments, and democratic self-binding. |
| | Rethinking the World Great Power Strategies and International Order | Jeffrey W. Legro | complete | 632 | Constructivism: ideational change in great-power strategy, with realist power and liberal domestic/institutional inputs. |
| | War and Change in World Politics | Robert Gilpin | complete | 632 | Realism: political economy realism; uneven growth, prestige gaps, and hegemonic war drive systemic change. |
| | Against the World Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars | Tara Zahra | complete | 632 | Mixed: historical account combining realist constraints, liberal internationalism's failures, and constructivist identity and mass politics. |
| | After Hegemony Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy | Robert Owen Keohane | complete | 632 | Liberalism: neoliberal institutionalism; cooperation under anarchy through regimes, information, reciprocity, and reputation. |
| | Power A Radical View | Steven Lukes | complete | 632 | Constructivism-adjacent: broader social theory of power; preference and belief formation explain invisible domination. |
| | Man, the State, and War A Theoretical Analysis | Kenneth Neal Waltz | complete | 632 | Realism: classical/structural realist roots; anarchy, self-help, and the security dilemma make war recurrent. |
| | The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 Reissued with a new preface from Michael Cox | E.H. Carr | complete | 632 | Realism: classical realist critique of utopian liberalism; power and interest discipline international morality and institutions. |
| | The Candy Bombers The Untold Story of the Berlin Aircraft and America's Finest Hour | Andrei Cherny | complete | 627 | — |
| | How the War Was Won Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II | Phillips Payson O'Brien | complete | 627 | — |
| | Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb | James M. Scott | complete | 627 | — |
| | The Tormented Alliance American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949 | Zach Fredman | complete | 627 | — |
| | MacArthur's Airman General George C. Kenney and the War in the Southwest Pacific | Thomas E. Griffith | complete | 627 | — |
| | Red Phoenix Rising The Soviet Air Force in World War II | Von Hardesty, Ilya Grinberg | complete | 627 | — |
| | The Bombing War Europe 1939-1945 | R. J. Overy | complete | 627 | — |
| | Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 | Tami Davis Biddle | complete | 627 | — |
| | Operational Culture and Air Power | Jakšić, Milena A. | complete | 627 | — |
| | Cry Havoc How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931-1941 | Joseph Maiolo | complete | 627 | — |
| | Empire of the Air Aviation and the American Ascendancy | Jenifer Van Vleck | complete | 627 | — |
| | Winged Defense The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power--Economic and Military | William Mitchell | complete | 627 | — |
| | The First World War | Hew Strachan | complete | 627 | — |
| | The Science of Military Strategy 20 (English Translation) | Xiao Tianliang | complete | 600 | — |
| | The Sea Power of the State | S.G. Gorshkov | complete | 600 | — |
| | The Strategy Bridge Theory for Practice | Colin S. Gray | complete | 600 | — |
| | Military Strategy A General Theory of Power Control | Joseph Wylie, Jr | complete | 600 | — |
| | The Foundations of the Science of War | J F C Fuller | complete | 600 | — |
| | Air Power and Armies | Sir John Cotesworth Slessor | complete | 600 | — |
| | Strategy Second Revised Edition | Hart B. H. Liddell | complete | 600 | — |
| | Command Of The Air | General Giulio Douhet | complete | 600 | — |
| | Some Principles of Maritime Strategy Large Print | Julian Corbett | complete | 600 | — |
| | Mahan on Naval Strategy Selections from the Writings of Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan | Alfred Thayer Mahan | complete | 600 | — |
| | The Art of War | Antoine Henri baron de Jomini | complete | 600 | — |
| | The New Makers of Modern Strategy From the Ancient World to the Digital Age | Hal Brands | complete | 600 | — |
| | On War | Carl von Clausewitz | complete | 600 | — |
| | The Seven Military Classics Of Ancient China | Ralph D. Sawyer | complete | 600 | — |
| | The Evolution of Strategy Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present | Beatrice Heuser | complete | 600 | — |
| | Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry By Christine de Pizan | Charity Cannon Willard, Sumner Willard | complete | 600 | — |
| | Every War Must End | Fred Charles Iklé | complete | 601 | — |
| | When France Fell The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance | Michael S. Neiberg | complete | 601 | — |
| | Perception and Misperception in International Politics | Robert Jervis | complete | 601 | — |
| | Analogies at War Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 | Yuen Foong Khong | complete | 601 | — |
| | Just and Unjust Wars A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations | Michael Walzer | complete | 601 | — |
| | The Landmark Thucydides | Thucydides | complete | 601 | — |
| | Essence of Decision Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis | Graham T. Allison, Philip Zelikow | complete | 601 | — |
| | Why War? | Richard Overy | complete | 601 | — |
| | The Structure of Scientific Revolutions | Thomas S. Kuhn | complete | 601 | — |
| | Out of the Darkness The Germans, 1942-2022 | Frank Trentmann | complete | 690 | — |
| | Grad School Essentials A Crash Course in Scholarly Skills | Zachary Shore | complete | 690 | — |
| | How to Read a Book | Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren | complete | 690 | — |
| | The Craft of Research | Booth, Wayne C., et al | complete | 690 | — |