People
Call Sign Chaos – Mattis (2019)
Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas - and short-sighted thinking - now facing our nation. He makes it clear why America must return to a strategic footing so as not to continue winning battles but fighting inconclusive wars.
Leading with Honor – Ellis (2012)
How did American military leaders in the brutal POW camps of North Vietnam inspire their followers for six, seven, and even eight years to remain committed to the mission, resist a cruel enemy, and return home with honor? What leadership principles engendered such extreme devotion, perseverance, and teamwork? In this powerful and practical book, Lee Ellis, a former Air Force pilot, candidly talks about his five and a half years of captivity and the 14 key leadership principles behind this amazing story.
Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History - O’Brien (2019)
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. While male pilots were lauded as heroes, the few women who dared to fly were more often ridiculed—until a cadre of women pilots banded together to break through the entrenched prejudice.
The Impact Manifesto: How Young Generations Subvert Ideas of Leadership – Gipple (2021)
Leadership has become a buzzword—a term used so often and so broadly that it’s nearly lost all meaning. The Impact Manifesto: How Younger Generations Subvert Ideas of Leadership will teach you how to redefine and reclaim leadership, to challenge the status quo, and to make a difference—no matter how big or how small. In this book, you will hear inspiring stories from everyday leaders.
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself – Tawwab (2021)
Healthy boundaries. We all know we should have them--in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do "healthy boundaries" really mean--and how can we successfully express our needs, say "no," and be assertive without offending others? Licensed counselor, sought-after relationship expert, and one of the most influential therapists on Instagram Nedra Glover Tawwab demystifies this complex topic for today's world. In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life. Rooted in the latest research and best practices used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), these techniques help us identify and express our needs clearly and without apology--and unravel a root problem behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more.
Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Balance – Dayton (2008)
Picking up right at the point where Janet Woititz’s 1990 hit book Adult Children of Alcoholics left off, clinical psychologist Tian Dayton’s latest contribution contains fresh perspectives and new analysis on how to gain back emotional stability after growing up with the trauma of addiction, abuse, and dysfunction. Dr. Dayton accomplishes this by presenting and explaining the latest research in neuropsychology and the role trauma plays on chemically altering the brain. With compassion and clear explanations and her own personal journey, Dayton teaches readers how to undo the neuropsychological damage of trauma to rewire the brain and reverse the negative effects trauma has on our future relationships and behaviors to gain emotional sobriety.
Mission
(Podcast & Book) The Bomber Mafia - Gladwell
Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists had a different view. This “Bomber Mafia” asked: What if precision bombing could, just by taking out critical choke points - industrial or transportation hubs - cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?
- Apple Podcast
- Audible
Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany – Miller (2014)
Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air no warriors had encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force Band. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers. In 1943 an American bomber crewman stood only a one-in-five chance of surviving his tour of duty. The Eighth Air Force lost more men in the war than the US Marine Corps.
No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security – Nichols (2013)
From a solid historical foundation, Nichols makes the compelling argument that to end the danger of worldwide nuclear holocaust, the United States must take the lead in abandoning unrealistic threats of nuclear force and then create a new and more stable approach to deterrence for the twenty-first century.
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety – Schlosser (2013)
A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved - and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten.
Modernize
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon – Sheehan (2009)
From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history–and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger.
Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed – Rich (1994)
From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies. Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds.
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries – Bahcall (2019)
Loonshots reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs. Bahcall, a physicist and entrepreneur, shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing new ideas to rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.
Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare – Brose (2020)
As former Staff Director for the Senate Armed Services Committee and senior policy advisor to Senator John McCain, Christian Brose saw this reality up close. In The Kill Chain, he elaborates on one of the greatest strategic predicaments facing America now: that we are playing a losing game. Our military's technological superiority and traditional approach to projecting power have served us well for decades, when we faced lesser opponents. But now we face highly capable and motivated competitors that are using advanced technologies to erode our military edge, and with it, our ability to prevent war, deter aggression, and maintain peace.
Engage
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 – Clark (2014)
Clark traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts between the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade, and examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks.
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know – Gladwell (2019)
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the number-one New York Times best seller Outliers, reinvents the audiobook in this immersive production of Talking to Strangers, a powerful examination of our interactions with people we don’t know.
(Podcast) The Fourth Leg
The Institute for Security and Technology designs and advances solutions to the world’s toughest emerging security threats. It is a nonpartisan, nonprofit network based in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to solving critical international security challenges through better technology and policy.
- Apple Podcast
- Spotify
- SoundCloud
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know – Grant (2021)
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You'll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It's an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.
Strategic Environment
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap – Allison (2018)
China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve.
(Video) Is War Between China and the US Inevitable? - Allison
Taking lessons from a historical pattern called "Thucydides's Trap," political scientist Graham Allison shows why a rising China and a dominant United States could be headed towards a violent collision no one wants -- and how we can summon the common sense and courage to avoid it.
- YouTube
The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News – Ostrovsky (2017)
A highly regarded Moscow correspondent for the Economist, Arkady Ostrovsky comes to this story both as a participant and a foreign correspondent. His knowledge of many of the key players allows him to explain the phenomenon of Valdimir Putin - his rise and astonishing longevity, his use of hybrid warfare and the alarming crescendo of his military interventions. One of Putin's first acts was to reverse Gorbachev's decision to end media censorship and Ostrovsky argues that the Russian media has done more to shape the fate of the country than its politicians. Putin pioneered a new form of demagogic populism --oblivious to facts and aggressively nationalistic - that has now been embraced by Donald Trump. In his new paperback preface, Ostrovsky will explore how Putin influenced the US election, the Trump Putin access, and will consider how Putin's methods - weaponizing the media and serving up fake news - came to enter American politics.
(Podcast) Horns of a Dilemma
Podcast features lectures, interviews, and panel discussion at the University of Texas.
- Apple Podcast
- Spotify