Category: Military Innovation
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Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (2002) by Robert Coram
I came to this book with a completely open mind. For the past two decades I’ve lived and worked in Silicon Valley as a technology executive, but my educational background and early career experience was in national security and defense, including a stint at the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, the defense department’s internal long-range…
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The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force (2017) by Eliot A. Cohen
There are, it seems to me, two distinct elements to “The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power & the Necessity of Military Force” by Eliot Cohen. First, and in my opinion far most important, is how should our elected and military leaders think about national security strategy and the decision to go to war?…
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Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (1996) by Robert A. Pape
The Persian Gulf War of 1991 appeared to usher in a new age of warfare. Long range, precision-guided weapons quickly and easily decimated the formidable, battle-hardened army of Saddam Hussein. An information age “revolution in military affairs” seemed to offer a powerful new coercive tool for policymakers wary of committing ground forces and sustaining casualties.…
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Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400- 1700 (1985) by Caro M. Cipolla
In the late eighteenth century, Adam Smith observed that “in ancient times the opulent and civilized found it difficult to defend themselves against the poor and barbarous nations; in modern times the poor and barbarous find it difficult to defend themselves against the opulent and civilized.” In truth, the success of the “West against the…
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Age of Gunpowder Empires, 1450-1800 (1990) by William H. McNeill
“As long as human foresight remains imperfect, and our passions continue to induce us to fight one another, managing armed force wisely will remain both difficult and important.” So concludes historian William H. McNeil in this nifty essay of 48 pages, which is based largely on his lengthy treatise, “The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed…
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Men, Machines, and Modern Times (1966) by Elting Morison
“Men, Machines, and Modern Times” by Elting Morison is a difficult book to review, primarily because it really isn’t a book at all, but rather a collection of lectures that the author delivered at various academic institutions in the 1950s. Taken together, the lectures address two distinct topics in the nature of innovation, although that’s…
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The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (1998) by David Ellis
I picked up David Eltis’ “The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe” out of a clearance bin at Barnes & Noble many years ago. It remained buried and forgotten in a corner of my home library until I stumbled upon it after reading about naval innovation around the same period. It was a fortuitous find and…
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Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy (2009) by John R. Hale
John Hale was an undergraduate student of the famed classicist Donald Kagan at Yale in the early 1970s when he first fell in love with ancient Greek history. Hale was also a member of the college crew team and was thus intimately familiar with the mechanics and challenges of strenuous rowing, a unique and valuable…
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The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (1976) by Paul Kennedy
Paul Kennedy made quite a splash with “The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery” when it first came out in 1976, although I’m not entirely sure why. His primary theses – that the rise and fall of sea power track closely with that of economic power, and that the effective exercise of military might…
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