Reddit reviews Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age

In depends. The military identifies three levels of war: tactical, operational, and strategic. Tactical is just as it sounds. Small units up to Brigade and Division level. Operational goes higher, division to corps, to Joint Task Force to Theater. Strategic goes from theater to national. The lines can blur, especially between operational and strategic.

In the Army, company grade officers (LTs and CPTs) focus on the tactical level in their training. Theoretically, all junior officers learn some degree of small unit tactics. Some company grade officer end up working at higher levels so they get a lot of OJT at the higher levels. That's what happened to me when I was a Captain assigned to CENTCOM.

Field grades (MAJ-COL) get trained at the operational and strategic level. These are the folks who write all the plans. They are also the ones who command battalions and above.

At the Colonel level, officers get training on the higher echelons of strategy or what some people might call "grand strategy". These are the guys who will write the big war plans.

There are schools at each level that teach officers how to do their jobs. Many officers also attend graduate school. That's where I'm at right now. (http://www.nps.edu/Academics/SIGS/NSA/)

As far as reading goes, it depends on what you're interested in. For tactical, books like "Band of Brothers" are timeless and great. "Thunder Run" is a good look at the early phases of OIF. For a look at the Operational/Strategic level, I'd check out "Cobra II", "Fiasco", and "The Gamble".

Most of the military publications and field manuals are open source. The Ranger Handbook is the best all around for small unit tactics. If you want to learn how the Army is set up, try FM-1 The Army (http://www.army.mil/fm1/) or the COIN manual. (http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf) For a look at how all the forces fight together, check out the Joint Operations Manual. (http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp3_0.pdf) However, most of these are really dry and jargon laden.

If you want a good starting source for strategy and what has shaped strategic thought, check out "Makers of Modern Strategy". (http://www.amazon.com/Makers-Modern-Strategy-Machiavelli-Nuclear/dp/0691027641) You can also read up on some Clausewitz because we love our dead German military theorists in the Army.

So layman can be a relative term... non-degreed but well-read amatuer all the way down to "never read anything related to this topic before", so with that in mind, "Makers of Modern Strategy" is a pretty excellent place to start, collecting essays from a number of notable experts and covering the evolution of military strategy over the past ~500 or so years.

Makers of Modern Strategy

http://www.amazon.com/Makers-Modern-Strategy-Machiavelli-Nuclear/dp/0691027641

This is right in my wheelhouse! My own expertise on the war in the Pacific is mainly naval, but yes, I know some good books about that!

I would recommend, first of all, Clayton James' essay American and Japanese Strategies in the Pacific War, located in Peter Paret's Makers of Modern Strategy, which provides exactly what you are looking for. After that, I recommend George Baer's One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890 - 1990 (the relevent sections, obviously; not the whole thing) and Doug Smith's Carrier Battles: Command Decision in Harm's Way for a good overview of the US Navy's role in the development of American strategy, policy, and operations against Japan, as well as how interwar Navy PME influenced their thinking on these issues.

David Evans and Mark Peattie's Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887 - 1941 is absolutely imperative for any kind of understanding of the Imperial Japanese Navy's strategic, institutional, and doctrinal shortcomings as they were eventually revealed during WWII. And I highly recommend Ron Spector's Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, which also offers excellent analysis on the comparative merits and shortcomings of Japanese and US naval strategy.

Gerhard Weinberg's A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II is a bit daunting (1200 pages!) but provides the single best overall review of the war, including the war in the Pacific. For a look at US Army strategy, I'd recommend the US Army Green Book Series on the war in the Pacific; these books were written by Army staff and historians in the decade or two following the war, and offer a perspective that is sometimes difficult to find in more recent works.

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Paperback – ed. Peter Paret
That's if you want something more academic that the usual recommendations of Sun Tzu or Clausewitz.

^This^ ...and Battle By John Lynn, The Military Revolution Debate: Readings On The Military Transformation Of Early Modern Europe Edited by Rogers, and Makers of Modern Strategy by Peter Paret

Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age.

I got my undergrad in History (with an emphasis on Military History) and am working on a masters in Military History. My last class was Military Though and Theory, and we read Makers of Modern Strategy. I LOVED the book. Also, if you're gonna buy Clausewitz, be sure to get the Howard/Paret version.

And the book is called "Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age" by Peter Paret. I bought it at the US Air Force Academy when I visited one time :)

Not so completely, or in the same way. Makers of Modern Strategy is one of the best single volumes on warfare through World War Two and the Cold War.

There are good books on the development of Civil War strategy, on Prussian strategy, on strategy between Unification and WW1, between WW1 and 2, but then things dry up. And there isnt one book that covers everything and every time period. MMS is a great book, and it covers everything (including Weigley's book), but its not as good. Its just all there really is thats comparable.