Here are 94 books that American Cipher fans have personally recommended if you like
American Cipher.
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In a world in which we are faced with increasing amounts of information that we have to parse (from social media, cable news channels, newspapers), it often feels hard to separate fact from fiction, and evidence-based research from junk science. In my own work, I have given a great deal of thought to how to get research-based evidence into the hands of practitioners (managers, employees) who can put it to good use. An important piece of the puzzle is helping practitioners understand the research evidence and how to apply it. The books on this list are great examples of authors who translate research into language that people can understand and use.
This book starts with an interesting premise, that the U.S. is a society that favors Extroverts over Introverts.
The author cites academic research and data from her own experiences to demonstrate how we moved from a society that valued character over personality, to one that lauds the Extroversion Ideal…at school, at work, and other public venues. This book made me think hard about how my perceptions of others might be influenced by my assumptions about what Extroverts and Introverts bring to the table.
SUSAN CAIN'S NEW BOOK, BITTERSWEET, IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW
A SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE HOW YOU SEE INTROVERTS - AND YOURSELF - FOREVER.
Our lives are driven by a fact that most of us can't name and don't understand. It defines who our friends and lovers are, which careers we choose, and whether we blush when we're embarrassed.
That fact is whether we're an introvert or an extrovert.
The most fundamental dimension of personality, at least a third of us are introverts, and yet shyness, sensitivity and seriousness are often seen as…
I’ve always been a talker. In the fourth grade my teacher, L. Wood, wrote on my report card, “Mark is a good worker. He is well adjusted and is well-liked in the classroom and on the playground. Mark needs to control himself when he likes to speak out too frequently.” Some things (personality) never change. Now, sixty years later with the help of my doctor, I’m working on it. I've been trying to understand myself, and others for most of my life. Using Nettle's descriptors I could be called a confident, callous, Poet Wanderer. Now, in my seventies, and having written three books about it - I'm beginning to get it.
Full confession: the author is my son, Jake Jabbour. This is a memoir written in 2017 about the death of my father, his grandfather. They were close. My father died in October 2016, three weeks before the election of Donald Trump as POTUS. Subsequently, in the spring of 2017, we had a service for The Colonel. That's when this story begins.
After the service, Jake broke up with his girlfriend and embarked on a train trip across America. The reason was to teach and perform Improvisation Comedy. During that sixteen-day journey, Jake attempts to make sense of all that has happened. Moreover, to reflect on who he is. It's beautifully written, heartbreaking, and inspiring.
Jake identifies as an INFJ. Which stands for Introvert, Intuition, Feeling, Judging. It designates one of sixteen personality types per the Myers-Briggs Personality Type indicator test. My doctor doesn't give the MBTI much credence. However, a…
At thirty-three, comedian and educator Jake Jabbour found himself living alone after a breakup with his girlfriend and burying his grandpa. His most impactful relationships ended, stripping from him his identities as a roommate, boyfriend, and grandson. Hoping to discover who he was when he wasn’t himself, Jake boarded an Amtrak train with his comedy partner to perform live improv across the country, from Los Angeles to New York, examining the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of his past that landed him alone in the most crowded cities in the country.
In the lineage of Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live…
I’ve always been a talker. In the fourth grade my teacher, L. Wood, wrote on my report card, “Mark is a good worker. He is well adjusted and is well-liked in the classroom and on the playground. Mark needs to control himself when he likes to speak out too frequently.” Some things (personality) never change. Now, sixty years later with the help of my doctor, I’m working on it. I've been trying to understand myself, and others for most of my life. Using Nettle's descriptors I could be called a confident, callous, Poet Wanderer. Now, in my seventies, and having written three books about it - I'm beginning to get it.
This book is the best description of the general consensus of personality today. The book describes the concept of OCEAN, or the Big Five personality indicators. OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
I like this book because it's not overdone. Nettle simplifies the complex - the Big Five. Chapter headings are: "Wanderers"; "Worriers"; "Controllers"; "Empathizers"; and "Poets". One word descriptors for persons who typically represent each trait.
Nettle does go into detail about clusters of traits and behaviors that characterize each type. Extroverts are Wanderers, generally optimistic, positive, and adventuresome. Introverts are aloof and can be Worriers, generally pessimistic, negative, and risk-averse. Or said another way - stay-at-homes, stick-in-the-muds, grounded individuals who could be happy being the way they are.
The one-word descriptors along with their opposites can be a fun and useful way to think about people. Such as novelist Lee Child's protagonist, Jack Reacher. Reacher…
Why are some people worriers, and others wanderers? Why do some people seem good at empathising, and others at controlling? We have something deep and consistent within us that determines the choices we make and the situations we bring about. But why should members of the same species differ so markedly in their natures? What is the best personality to have; a bold one or a shy one, an aggressive one or a meek one? And are you stuck with your personality, or can you change it?
Daniel Nettle takes the reader on a tour through the science of human…
I’ve always been a talker. In the fourth grade my teacher, L. Wood, wrote on my report card, “Mark is a good worker. He is well adjusted and is well-liked in the classroom and on the playground. Mark needs to control himself when he likes to speak out too frequently.” Some things (personality) never change. Now, sixty years later with the help of my doctor, I’m working on it. I've been trying to understand myself, and others for most of my life. Using Nettle's descriptors I could be called a confident, callous, Poet Wanderer. Now, in my seventies, and having written three books about it - I'm beginning to get it.
This is a novel published by Ken Kesey in 1964. Not only is it one of the best books to understand personality, but it is one of the best novels ever. It tells the story of an American family whose patriarch, Henry Stamper, is a classic narcissist. Stamper could be described as a confident, callous, Controlling Wanderer. He is an independent logger and owns his home and business on a river on the central coast of Oregon. He defies the small town, his neighbors, and the national union. His behavior ultimately leads to much pain and suffering. However, Henry has a good time.
The writing is poetic and insightful. All the characters' personalities are well fleshed out. It is the story of America coming of age in the '50s and '60s. Today, sixty years later, America's culture is changing; but personalities remain as they've always been. Personality is the bedrock…
The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sailor Song is a wild-spirited and hugely powerful tale of an Oregon logging clan.
A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his father; and Viv, who fell in love with Hank's exuberant machismo but now finds it wearing thin. And then there is Leland, Henry's bookish younger…
I’ve always craved outdoor adventure. My earliest preschool memories include frog hunting in the fields behind my house, and careening down hills around the neighborhood on my metal-wheeled skateboard. In middle school, I progressed to BMX, spearfishing and surfing. After college, I added snow and water skiing, windsurfing, and eventually mountain biking to the mix, and was fortunate to have a career that allowed time and resources to travel the world extensively seeking adventure. Now well into my sixties, I research and write about science, extreme sports, nature and philosophy in between daily hikes and mountain bike rides around the homebase and monthly journeys to destinations unknown.
I wanted to understand why individuals in our society would volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way by joining—and sometimes reenlisting—to serve on the front lines in a far-flung region of little strategic value to our country (Afghanistan).
In this book, a couple of common themes popped up: camaraderie and heightened states of awareness. The bonds these young men cement when depending upon each other for life and limb take on meaning greater than life itself.
And the strange sense of control—and lack of fear—that can occur on the battlefield when adrenaline kicks in and everything slows down in the mind’s eye has parallels to situations that us outdoor adventure enthusiasts also crave—the “flow experience”—but at a level of intensity I can only imagine.
From the author of The Perfect Storm, a gripping book about Sebastian Junger's almost fatal year with the 2nd battalion of the American Army.
For 15 months, Sebastian Junger accompanied a single platoon of thirty men from the celebrated 2nd battalion of the U.S. Army, as they fought their way through a remote valley in Eastern Afghanistan. Over the course of five trips, Junger was in more firefights than he could count, men he knew were killed or wounded, and he himself was almost killed. His relationship with these soldiers grew so close that they considered him part of the…
I’m an American writer, Army wife, and occasional expat who has spent nearly a decade of my life living abroad (including Japan, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates), not to mention seven Army moves stateside. I love to read (and write!) books that explore discordance and dislocation, what it is like to be an American living overseas in a time of war, and how these things impact relationships with friends, families, and strangers, and our concept of “home.” My writing is often an exploration of the mundane mixed with the catastrophic. Oh, and I have a weakness for stray cats. Lots of stray cats.
There is a refreshing versatility to the stories in this collection, which touch upon everything from soldiers on the front lines in Iraq, readjustment to the American home front, and a civilian foreign service officer getting stymied at every attempt at humanitarian aid. There is humor, irony, and gutting realism on every page, and the many perspectives offer the insights you hope for in a National Book Award-winning piece of fiction.
"Redeployment is hilarious, biting, whipsawing and sad. It's the best thing written so far on what the war did to people's souls." -Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review
Selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post Book World, Amazon, and more
Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality…
I have spent the majority of my 25-year career working across the Middle East and Africa. From 2004-2006, I was one of a small group of American diplomats posted to Libya following the 2003 US deal with Gaddafi. During Libya's 2011 revolution, I returned to Libya as a private citizen to help build and became a witness to the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi. I am particularly interested in the impact of domestic political warfare on US foreign policy and national security. My work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Salon,The New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, and Forbes, among others.
Washington Post correspondent Craig Whitlock’s book on the last phase of the US war in Afghanistan packs a big punch – which seems to have been left unabsorbed by the mainstream media.
Based on a rich archive of official interviews and oral histories, Whitlock presents a detailed case that the Obama administration hid the extent of the failure of the Afghan “surge” because of its fear that any 9/11-linked fiasco would damage the President’s 2012 reelection chances.
As with the other work profiled here, this book helps explain why the Obama administration’s Benghazi narrative appeared both unlikely and confused, and how the Right exploited the American public’s discomfort with it to create its own increasingly aggressive and deranged narrative.
The groundbreaking investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America's longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban's recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock.
Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of…
In 2003-4 I spent a year in the British Army between school and university. Ten years later, having become a journalist, I returned to investigate what a decade of war had done to the institution I knew as an adolescent. In the years I spent researching and writing The Changing of the Guard I read reams of non-fiction. However, novels retain an ability to hit wider – or harder truths – and some of our greatest writers have fictionalised British Army life. Here is a selection of British Army novels, well-known and less so. They take in conflicts ranging from the First and Second World Wars through to Northern Ireland and Afghanistan.
In the interests of full disclosure, I knew Campbell at university so my judgment on this novel of the Afghan war cannot be fully impartial.
I found it powerful though. There are obvious overlays between the experience of Campbell himself and his central protagonist Tom Chamberlain – both serve in high-period Afghanistan as officers with cavalry units. (Campbell was in the Blues and Royals). That overlap grants the novel its authenticity – from its dissection of 'ally,’ British army slang for cool, to “rock star” bomb disposal officers capable of “squaring up to colonels” and coffins of blast victims reduced to a few scraps of ruined flesh subsequently weighed down with sandbags.
Campbell’s next novel, The Fires of Gallipoli, set in the First World War, will be out next year.
ONE OF THE EVENING STANDARD'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Barney Campbell's Rain is a searingly powerful debut that reads like a British Matterhorn ********
'A wonderfully achieved, enthralling and moving novel of war. Its authenticity is as telling as it is terrifying' William Boyd
'No better on-the-ground description of Britain's war will ever be written. Rain is what Chickenhawk or, more recently, Matterhorn was to Vietnam. It's unputdownable, except for when the reader needs to draw breath or battle a lump in the throat' Evening Strandard
Corporal Thomas (my acting sergeant since Adams died) and I have to go…
I have expertise and a passion for this topic because I suffered from a terrible addiction to drugs for many years and was considered a hopeless case. If I can beat my addiction then anyone can!
I enjoyed this because it was a true story of a Navy Seal that went through a horrible life & death struggle and came through the other side of it to be an inspiration for many. Marcus Luttrell tells his story so honestly and in such detail that you feel you are there with him. It also shows us the worst in humanity but also the best in humanity. How he ends up surviving this experience will amaze you and stay with you. I loved the fact that an Afghan citizen who was a complete stranger to him was one of the people who helped save his life. This is a book that inspires me to never give up and I think it will do the same for you!
Four US Navy SEALS departed one clear night in early July, 2005 for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their task was to document the activity of an al Qaeda leader rumoured to have a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, only one of those Navy SEALS made it out alive. This is the story of the only survivor of Operation Redwing, SEAL team leader Marcus Luttrell and the extraordinary firefight that led to the largest loss of life in American Navy SEAL history. His squadmates fought valiantly beside him until he was the only…
The relationship between servicewomen and the US military is a complicated one. It’s love, strength, comradery, and also abuse, manipulation, sexual harassment, and soul-crushing institutional betrayal. After leaving the military, I found most books or movies didn’t adequately represent this complex relationship, either ignoring the abuse altogether, or focusing too much on it and erasing the bravery and resilience of women service members. I strive to write books that better represent this conflicting relationship, and I hope this book list helps better reflect women’s experiences in the US military.
There is a very good reason this book has been adapted into a movie—it tells the very real story of women who circumvent Congressional law to fight alongside Army Rangers, Navy SEALS, and other special operations teams in Afghanistan. Female Engagement Teams (FET) take part in secret missions, under the dark of night, “attached” to special ops and not only proving they can keep up, but they are mission essential. It’s about friendship, loss, the bonds made in war, and a march towards equality, as combat roles weren’t open to women at the time—but these women did it anyway. Great to counter those people want to lavish praise on Rangers, SEALs, or Special Ops because they’re “the best of the best” and “only men.” Surprise! Women do it, too.
In 2010, the Army created Cultural Support Teams, a secret pilot program to insert women alongside Special Operations soldiers battling in Afghanistan. The Army reasoned that women could play a unique role on Special Ops teams: accompanying their male colleagues on raids and, while those soldiers were searching for insurgents, questioning the mothers, sisters, daughters and wives living at the compound. Their presence had a calming effect on enemy households, but more importantly, the CSTs were able to search adult women for weapons and gather crucial intelligence. They could build relationships-woman to woman-in ways that male soldiers in an Islamic…
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