Holiday Reading List 2025

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As another turbulent year in global security winds down, the holiday season offers a rare pause—a moment to step back from the day-to-day churn of operations, analysis, and commentary. It’s also a chance to read more deeply. This curated holiday reading list, generated by members from the Small Wars Journal staff, brings together works that illuminate the evolving character of conflict, from gray-zone competition and urban insurgency to the enduring challenges of state-building and security force assistance. Whether you’re deployed, preparing for a new assignment, or simply taking stock of the strategic landscape, these selections aim to provoke reflection, sharpen judgment, and inspire fresh thinking for the year ahead. Happy reading—and stay safe.

Ken Gleiman, Editor in Chief

As we close out a year defined by grinding wars, sharpening competition, and ideological fault lines widening by the week, I’m choosing books that help us understand what actually drives conflict: identity, legitimacy, coercion, and the messy human decisions that sit underneath every so-called “strategic outcome.” One book I’ll revisit because it remains indispensable; five more I’ll read because each speaks to a core tension shaping today’s irregular and conventional fights. If you want to understand modern conflict without the usual buzzwords or wishful thinking, these titles will take you there.

One Book I Am Going to Reread

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Benedict Anderson (2016).

Every war or potential flash point we are watching today is ultimately anchored in contested ideas of “us.” Anderson’s classic reminder is that nations aren’t ancient facts; they’re stories powerful enough to inspire cooperation, sacrifice, and, when manipulated, catastrophe. As identity politics continues to shape Taiwan, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Gaza, and everywhere else on the brink, this is the right moment to revisit why people will fight, kill, and die for a community that exists mainly in the collective imagination. Understanding that imagined space is a prerequisite to understanding irregular warfare in the real world.

You could pair it with Fukuyama’s Identity or Colin Woodard’s American Nations—both sharpen Anderson’s insights for today’s fractured landscape.

Books I’m Looking Forward to Reading

Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War. Orde F. Kittrie (2016).

Great-power competition now plays out in courts, tribunals, treaties, and loopholes—and the U.S. is still treating law like a compliance requirement while others wield it like a weapon. Kittrie lays out how lawfare works, why it matters, and what it means for states that still want to win while staying inside the rules. For irregular warfare professionals, this is a foundational text for understanding the battlespace we’ve been losing without noticing.

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948. Harold M. Tanner (2012).

If you want to understand modern PLA and CCp political-military culture, and by extension future conflict over Taiwan, start with the campaign that decisively broke the Nationalists and delivered the northeast to Mao. Tanner offers a sober, operationally grounded account of how legitimacy, logistics, morale, and political work shaped the outcome as much as raw combat power. The past isn’t predictive, but it’s deeply instructive, and this book is essential for anyone studying the roots of the PRC’s theory of victory.

Those Who Face Death: Resistance and the Price of Defiance. Mark Grdovic (2003).

Irregular warfare ultimately runs on human courage. It is often quiet, often thankless, and always costly. Mark was my instructor in the 18A course (Green Beret Qualification Course) back in 1999. Grdovic’s work looks at resistance not as a romantic abstraction but as a lived experience shaped by risk, repression, and moral calculus. At a time when multiple states are preparing national resistance strategies and others are already fighting from underground, this book promises to cut through the slogans and get back to the people actually doing the resisting. Mark was my instructor in the 18A course (Green Beret Qualification Course) back in 1999.

Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War. Nathan K. Finney (2025).

The U.S. didn’t win World War I with mass mobilization alone. According to Finney, it won by mobilizing society itself. Finney examines how government, industry, civic groups, and social organizations collectively generated power in ways most strategists have forgotten. For modern democracies trying to prepare for competition, gray-zone coercion, and even potential occupation, this study of the American “associational state” offers lessons in whole-of-nation problem solving long before we coined the term. Nate is also an old friend and colleague, and I have heard bits and pieces about this book over glasses of good whiskey. I am looking forward to taking in the final product.

Amos Fox, Managing Editor

How the United States Would Fight China: The Risks of Pursuing a Rapid Victory. Franz-Stefan Gady (2025). In How the United States Would Fight China, Gady critically examines how a potential war between the U.S. and China might unfold. Gady compares and contrasts both the U.S. military’s emphasis on fighting and winning quickly, against a significantly robust and resilient China. In doing so, Gady finds that the U.S. will potentially find itself falling short against China. Gady emphasizes that U.S. military continues to rely on a poor understanding of systems theory upon which to both build its joint force and anchor its military concepts and doctrine, while remaining wedded to the quick win fallacy. As a result, the U.S. military runs the risk of overextending itself and hitting strategic exhaustion well before it has defeat the Chinese military. Thus, Gady provides a robust set of recommendations for how the U.S. military can reorient itself to not only survive in a potential war with China, but thrive on the battlefield. Gady’s How the United States Would Fight China is an absolute must for anyone interested in strategy, force design, great power competition, and the mechanics of warfighting and warfare.

Military Theory and the Conduct of War. Azar Gat (2025). Gat’s Military Theory and the Conduct of War provides yet another tremendous contribution to his already stellar body of work on military theory. In this book, Gat suggests that it is time to move beyond many of the Carl von Clausewitz’s out-of-date concepts, as well as not take too serious significant portions of On War because Clausewitz died while rewriting much of the text. What’s more, Gat contends that war is not an aberration of the human spirit, but rather a rational cultural behavior that exists alongside cooperation and peaceful competition, and that a given situation and each actor’s self-interest drive the decision upon which behavior to act. In short, this book is a tremendous contribution to the realm of military theory and is an absolute must for those interested in the ideas that contribute to today’s strategies, military concepts, and doctrines.

Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat. Trevor N. Dupuy (1992). Dupuy’s Understanding War is a classic of military theory, yet is underappreciated today. Dupuy’s Understanding War examines the concept of defeat and how the concepts fits within military operations, strategy, and policy. Dupuy finds that defeat is a mental recognition – a defeated actor accepts the fact that they are either unwilling or unable to continue fighting. Defeat, according to Dupuy, occurs at all levels of war – tactical, operational, and strategic – but that it can also be temporary. Tactical units defeated in an engagement or battle, for instance, can regroup and fight again another day. However, to gain permanent defeat – an actor accepting that they no longer possess the capabilities or capacity to fight any longer, or in which resources and political will have been exhausted such that they drive strategic defeat – requires iterative engagement to compound the negative emotions and materiel situations that fuel defeat. As the U.S. and its partners and allies across the globe address real threats to global security and international peace, it is tantamount to remember what contributes to defeat. Thus, Dupuy’s Understanding War is a must-read for those charged with addressing those challenges.

Brett Benedict, Associate Editor

The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance. Steve Feldstein (2021). Discusses how authoritarian and democratic regimes use AI, surveillance, and data analytics similarly to repress public dissent. He then offers alternatives for combating digital repression from a whole-of-society approach.

Ground Combat: Puncturing The Myths of Modern War. Ben Connable (2025). Connable draws upon an enormous data set of over 600 cases of ground combat since 1941 to show that there has not been a “revolution of warfare”—rather, it has been an uneven evolution. Ground combat, despite technological change, is still characterized by infantry, armor, and artillery maneuver.

Kyle Ramsay, Assistant Editor

The Army and Vietnam. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. (1986) For scholars and practitioners who wish to understand America’s post-9/11 strategic failures in Afghanistan and the broader global war on terror (GWOT), The Army in Vietnam remains a foundational text. First published in 1986, the book presents a rigorous and unflinching analysis of the US Army’s attempt to fight a conventional military conflict amid a complex, nationalist-centric insurgency. The author identifies deep seated institutional myopia, strategic inflexibility, and a deliberate unwillingness to adapt to operational realities as central to America’s failure in Vietnam. The author’s critique of the Army’s brash resistance to organizational learning and self-assessment eerily resonates with contemporary US military interventions, making this study one of the most enduring and instructive analyses of military institutional behavior and strategic failure.

Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla. David Kilcullen (2015).

David Kilcullen’s Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla provides a seminal analysis of how four megatrends–population growth, urbanization, littoralization, and networked connectivity–are reshaping conflict and security in the 21st Century. Kilcullen examines the governance and security challenges of maintaining effective control over densely populated, networked urban spaces, emphasizing the need to facilitate predictability through an accepted and enforced ‘normative system of behaviour’ amid competition from civilian, criminal, state, and hybrid actors. Kilcullen asserts political and military leaders must first understand how a city functions–population and material flows, resource demands, carrying capacity, and the sociopolitical and environmental drivers of insecurity–before pursuing policies which involve military intervention. Kilcullen offers critical insight into how Western militaries can operate effectively in complex urban terrain, emphasizing the importance of proactively developing host nation institutional resilience to better adapt to shocks over pursuing illusory stability in a dynamic, complex system.

Adam Taliaferro, Associate Editor

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – and How It Shattered a Nation. Andrew Ross Sorkin (2025). Through detailed research of historical records and personal journals, Sorkin provides a fascinating perspective on the people and actions that led to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. 1929 offers a compelling look on how systemic instability, driven by unbridled ambition and a failure to heed warning signs, can lead to national catastrophe. Ross’ ideas on the psychology of crowds, economic drivers, the fragility of trust, and systemic risk provide lessons for navigating the future security environment.

Nathan Jennings, Assistant Editor

Multidomain Operations: The Pursuit of Battlefield Dominance in the 21st Century. Edited by Dr. Amos Fox and Mr. Franz-Stefan Gady (2025). This well-sourced edited volume provides a much-needed critical assessment of the primary operational concept that the U.S. Army and many other Western armies have adopted in response to perceived anti-access and area denial challenges by Russia and China. With innovative thinkers Dr. Amos Fox and Mr. Franz-Stefan Gady both editing and contributing to the book, they seamlessly integrate analysis from a variety of credible authors concerning the conception, application, and branding of MDO with intent to, “explore the concept thoroughly and expose its limitations.” Whether readers embrace MDO as an effective battle concept or question its operational utility, this work is a must-read for both academics and practitioners as it will illuminate many questions and catalyze an important, and increasingly fundamental, conversation that will inform the future of land warfare.

Anesadora Hightower, Associate Editor

Apple in China: The Capture of The World’s Greatest Company. Patrick McGee (2025). This book provides historical and contemporary context for Apple’s position within PRC’s economy. The author uses Apple as the lens for understanding the factors that enabled PRC to become a global manufacturing hub and its emergence as an economic superpower.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find the Stolen Generation of Children. Haley Cohen Gilliand (2025). This book covers the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a group of grandmothers who worked tirelessly to locate children stolen during Argentina’s dictatorial period from 1976-1983. The author utilizes personal accounts to illustrate the extent of the Abuelas’ struggle to reunite families torn apart during the regime.

Susan Siegrist, Associate Editor

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers. Andy Greenberg (2019). “Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers” remains one of my favorite books. The book is based on the true story of the NotPetya cyberattacks, Greenberg examines the risk of cyberattacks that affect national security and the stability of critical infrastructure. Along with a suspenseful examination of cyberattack attribution in a global context, “Sandworm” begins to paint a picture of future cyber warfare in the digital age, where the distinction between war and peace is blurred.

Brutal Catalyst: What Ukraine’s Cities Tell Us About Recovery From War. Russell W. Glenn (2024). Brutal Catalyst: What Ukraine’s Cities Tell Us About Recovery From War is a must-read to understand the challenges of urban warfare and reconstruction through the lens of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Glenn provides a comparative analysis of Ukraine’s challenges with other historical postwar reconstructions in Tokyo, Nagasaki, Berlin, Manila, and Sarajevo. This book is an essential reference and guide to urban recovery and international relations.

Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit. Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundie (2024). It is fascinating that Henry Kissinger spent the last years of his life understanding artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and sharing his perspective on how AI may be used to solve global challenges. Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit explores the Artificial Intelligence revolution that is transforming global affairs and humanity. Kissinger, et al., combine a multidisciplinary perspective and analysis of global risks, challenges, and potential benefits to frame AI’s possible effect on human agency, intelligence, and the future.

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