The most recommended books about the Pentagon

This book is not McNamara’s most famous nor original–it essentially weaves together his speeches to provide reflections about war and nuclear weapons–but is arguably his most compelling.

The shadow of Ellsberg and his colleagues who wrote many of these speeches is present and shows a distinct subculture that existed around McNamara, who was far more refined than the warmonger stereotype suggests and also dedicated to educating the American people about national security. It shows a man sitting atop the world’s most powerful defense establishment, grappling with important moral dilemmas, including its enormous capacity for human destruction and institutional pressures toward war.

A collection of essays that show that Ellsberg’s decision to reveal the Pentagon Papers was not an emotional impulse but a rational culminating point.

He went to Vietnam on several occasions, including as an advisor on pacification programs, and devoured official documents: he was the first–possibly only–person to read the full set of the Pentagon Papers at least once. It was on the basis of this new evidence that he revised his thinking, concluding that the war was “first… a problem; then… a stalemate; then… a crime.” Also, he trained as an economist, and there’s a kind of game theory logic that plays out in these essays. As his reading of the war incrementally changes, he understands that “optimal” outcomes require a different response from him. 

What I especially liked about Devolution is that some spy novels portray the protagonist as a larger-than-life superhero who knows more than everyone else and is never beset by personal uncertainty and struggle. John Casey, however, has created a character in Michael Dolan who has been wounded by a past trauma, and shows his humanity. I found myself identifying with him. I have never been able to identify with seemingly invulnerable superheroes. John Wayne or 007, I am not, nor will I ever be. Still, in Devolution, Michael Dolan is a man who is committed to the truth and fighting for what is right. Confronting truths about himself helps him to do that powerfully. 

Steven James is one of my favorite authors, and this novel is one of his best works. I connected with the main character, Travis Brock, a person blessed with an eidetic memory. Travis remembers everything he sees, but like an eyewitness to a crime, some things seen prove haunting afterward.

Threats, trouble, and conflict kept me turning pages. This story's ending, with one of the best twists I have ever read or heard of, left me with a sense of urgency to read the sequel as soon as it is published.

Michael Klare mines reports written by each of the U.S. armed services over the last couple of decades to show how the Pentagon identifies a variety of threats that are multiplied by climate change. Klare organizes them in a “threat ladder” ranging from most to least likely but from least to most dangerous, making it a ladder of escalation that diverts military personnel and resources from their main mission of defending the American homeland from foreign adversaries. If you're a committed pacifist, as many climate activists are, this book will be eye-opening. If you want to reduce and then stop the increase of climate change while protecting America from the worst impacts of weird weather in the coming decades, it turns out you may have more in common with generals and admirals than you'd thought.

It’d be hard to imagine a former marine, who served during the 1980’s or 1990’s, not identifying with Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead.

Swofford and his unit land in the desert sand to kickoff Operation Desert Shield, and months of boredom, anxiety, and self-doubt blanket the men. This isn’t your typical “shoot ‘em up bang bang” war diary. In fact, Swofford is a sniper who never fires a shot.

But months of patrolling an empty desert, living “the suck” life, eagerly awaiting a war to start, and the fear of the unknown drag on these marines and test their sanity. After months of grinding, the Gulf War begins then quickly ends. 

Like so much else Mumford wrote, this book is a volcano of provocative ideas that I found revelatory when I first read it and still do. Published in 1970, it summarizes much of Mumford’s thinking about the largely invisible and growing power structure he calls the Megamachine that threatens humanity and life on planet Earth.

His earlier writing, including The City in History (1961) and his essay The Natural History of Urbanization (1956), was formative for my own thinking about urban parasitism and aggression. Although a lover of cities, as am I, Mumford was well aware of the consequences of their depredations. 

The extreme length of Fall and Rise put me off until my agent Matthew Hamilton persuaded me to take the plunge.

Just as he’d promised, I found myself deeply engaged in the lives and ultimate fates of Mitchell Zuckoff’s large cast of real-life characters, whose personalities, back-stories, and ambitions are rendered with impressive immediacy.

Of course we already know the outcome of this tragic story, yet the book possesses remarkable narrative dynamism. Hovering over most of its pages is the unnerving question, “Which of these people will survive?”

Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso was a decorated military intelligence officer and Chief of the Pentagon's Foreign Technology desk in Army Research and Development. In this role he was tasked with managing numerous artifacts from the Roswell crash, and getting them safely into the hands of hand-selected private R&D firms for analysis, reverse engineering, and technology development. This book details not only his involvement, but the chain of evidence behind these artifacts, as well as technical details on at least a few of the items themselves, and what human technologies were adapted from these alien technologies.

This one shows a side of the Bay Area that few people know about. I loved this book because Francine Prose recounts her time living amongst the people who stole the Pentagon Papers and made them public. Her descriptions of San Francisco at night are haunting, and the book has a foreboding that creates high drama.

A pivotal event in ending the protracted war in Vietnam, this book is an important source document for anyone researching this era.