Titles to Note

Listed below is a select group of books recently or soon to be published that either contribute to the discussions initiated in the articles in the Australian Army Journal or on subjects that may be of interest in the near future. Some of these books may be reviewed in forthcoming editions of the Journal.

• John R. Ballard, David W. Lamm and John K. Wood, From Kabul to Baghdad and Back: the US at War in Afghanistan and Iraq, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2012, 408 pp.
  
  Ballard et al. examine the US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan focusing on those operational and strategic decisions that were most significant in shaping the course of both wars, from the liberation of Kabul in November 2001 to the surge strategies eventually employed in both conflicts. The book critically analyses the problems that beset the two wars, and argues that the US decision to prosecute both simultaneously affected the success of each individually. The authors reflect on lessons to be learnt from this most recent experience of a nation fighting two wars at once.

• Abdel Bari Atwan, After Bin Laden: Al-Qa’ida, The Next Generation, Saqi Books, 2012, 300 pp.

  Al-Qa’ida: The Next Generation looks at the continuing and evolving threat posed by Al-Qa’ida and its associated movements following the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Atwan argues that reports of the organisation’s demise are premature. Not only has it survived, the author argues, but having become a more horizontal and decentralised entity, it is now a stronger and more elusive target. The book describes the broadening network of alliances that Al-Qa’ida has forged, analyses its increasingly sophisticated grasp on technology and demonstrates how the group has exploited recent turmoil in the Middle East (notably in the wake of the Arab Spring) to its advantage. 

• James C. McNaughton, The Army in the Pacific: A Century of Engagement, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington DC, 2012, 91 pp.

  The 20th century was an extraordinarily turbulent period for the Pacific. As the US strategic focus shifts from the Middle East back to the region, McNaughton’s book presents a timely account of the US Army’s involvement in major Pacific conflicts from the war with Spain in 1898 to the Vietnam War. It illustrates how the US Army was required to engage in a variety of different missions, arguing that in doing so the forces helped to stabilise a complex region, and one to which US strategic interests were and continue to be inextricably linked.

• Geoff Hiscock, Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources, John Wiley & Sons Singapore, 2012, 286 pp.

  Hiscock’s central thesis is that, in the digital age, the great powers and their rivals will compete for ‘four essentials’: food, water, energy and metals. Earth Wars is a snapshot of this competition as it currently stands. The book examines political, technological and business developments across a range of key resource areas, including nuclear power, green energy, copper and shale gas. It also looks at the key players involved in the production of these resources, and the disputes and tensions that have arisen over them.

• Scott D. Aiken, The Swamp Fox: Lessons in Leadership from the Partisan Campaigns of Francis Marion, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2012, 336 pp.

  The Swamp Fox is an historical account of the method of guerrilla warfare employed by Brigadier General Francis Marion against the British during the American Revolution. It examines his tactics and leadership style, and also describes how Marion engaged in manoeuvre warfare, positional warfare and information warfare. The author relates Marion’s encounters to modern warfighting and shows how tactics employed over two centuries ago remain relevant today.

• John Andreas Olsen and Colin S. Gray (eds), The Practice of Strategy: From Alexander the Great to the Present, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011, 324 pp.

  This work is a study of the nature and logic of grand strategy and military strategy. It consists of 12 separate case studies, each by different authors. The editors seek to discover whether there are certain universal themes to be found in the practise of strategy despite the numerous differences in the circumstances of each case. They argue that, notwithstanding such differences, ‘nothing essential changes in the nature and function (or purpose) of strategy and war’.

• Robert Stevenson, To Win the Battle: The 1st Australian Division in the Great War, 1914–1918, Cambridge University Press, UK, 2013, 290 pp.

  To Win the Battle seeks to identify the source of the 1st Australian Division’s reputation as a formidable and reliable fighting force during the First World War. Stevenson uses extensive primary source material to look behind the myth surrounding the formation, much of which ascribes the Division’s success to its soldiers’ natural prowess. Stevenson demonstrates that the Division was not born great but became so, primarily because of effective administration, training, and the capacity of its commanders to adapt to the changing circumstances of the battlefield. This title is part of the Australian Army History Series.

• David Barrett and Brian Robertson, Digger’s Story, The Five Mile Press, 2012, 290 pp.

  Robertson and Barrett live in the same retirement village in Queensland. Over the course of several Sunday afternoons, Robertson recorded interviews with Barrett concerning his experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war during the Second World War. Digger’s Story puts that account to paper. The book highlights Barrett’s time working on the Burma-Thai Railway and the tasks he was required to undertake as a medical orderly. It also examines the Australian Reparations Committee, in which Barrett was involved, as well as the issue of post-war race relations with Japan.

• Christopher Moore, Roger, Sausage & Whippet – A Miscellany of Trench Lingo from the Great War, Headline, London, 2012, 224 pp.

  A unique lexicon was born in the trenches of the First World War. Moore’s book catalogues the words and phrases that entered the vernacular of the British soldier through the course of that conflict. Interspersed throughout this dictionary are the letters of Moore’s own ‘Captain Cartwright’, a humorous yet practical application of a language both peculiar and complex.

• Roland Perry, Pacific 360° – Australia’s Battle for Survival in World War II, Hachette Australia, Sydney, 2012, 500 pp.

  Pacific 360° recounts the experience of Australia as a nation during the Pacific conflict of World War II. Australia was being pulled in different directions by Churchill and Roosevelt, all the while facing the threat of the Imperial Japanese Army which, by February 1942, had taken Singapore — ‘Australia’s Dunkirk’. Perry’s analysis is conducted from multiple viewpoints, in particular that of wartime Prime Minister John Curtin. The work adopts a narrative style and treats its subject matter in detail.

• Carolyn W. Pumphrey (ed), The Energy and Security Nexus: A Strategic Dilemma, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2012, 306 pp, also available at: https://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/

  Over the course of two days in March 2011, the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, the North Carolina State University and the Strategic Studies Institute held a colloquium in Raleigh, North Carolina. Entitled ‘the energy and security nexus: a strategic dilemma’, the colloquium was attended by representatives of US federal and state government agencies, universities, think tanks, local organisations and businesses. Participants examined the connections between energy and security and discussed various ideas on how to resolve the strategic challenges they had identified. These discussions have been published in this volume edited by Carolyn Pumphrey.