Columbia University Press has two new books that should be on every Pentagon reading list. Fred Ikle's "Annihilation From Within" analyzes the threat of mass terror from within a nation-state -- disturbing, mega-casualty scenarios that lead to the political hijacking of democracy. "Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias," by Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Andrea J. Dew, examines Somalia, Chechnya, Afghanistan (Soviet and U.S.), and Iraq as case studies in the clash of "warriors against soldiers." The authors argue for an improved anthropology-based analysis of a society's warmaking capabilities. In many ways, "Insurgents" advocates "reinventing" a classical approach to war analysis (one Ibn Khaldun and John of Plano Carpino would understand).
"Blog of War" (Simon and Schuster), edited by Matt Burden, collects emails, blog posts and dispatches from soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Burden, a former U.S. Army major, dedicates the book to friends killed in action. The book is raw, gripping and, like most collections, uneven. It is also dirt honest, with the suffering, dying, laughs and pain unvarnished. (Full disclosure: Burden includes a short vignette I wrote about Baghdad's riskiest freeway.)
"Londonistan" (Encounter Books), by London Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips, is an eloquent warning of the dangers of "multicultural paralysis" and appeasing what Philips calls "clerical fascism." She sees Islamist demands for special cultural privileges as a threat to British democracy and documents the rise of anti-Semitism.
For the serious student of World War II, "GI Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology and Winning World War Two" (Praeger Security International), by James Jay Carafano, is a devotee's study of American combat adaptation and creativity. GIs in Iraq continue the tradition.
How to manage "coalition warfare" is a 21st century issue. Richard Dinardo's "Germany and the Axis Powers" (University of Kansas) is an informed lesson in "how not to" run a coalition. Dinardo, who teaches for the U.S. Marine Corps in Quantico, Va., exposes the Nazis' extraordinary organizational ineptitude.
Finally, there's a book that's not quite a book, but a good read and a stocking-stuffer. Michael Totten's pamphlet "Everything Could Explode at Any Moment" (Pamphleteer Press) chronicles Totten's Lebanon war coverage, from December 2005 through August 2006. The pamphlet -- in the tradition of the American Revolution's Tom Paine -- has re-emerged. Totten's work is available at www.pamphletguys.com and amazon.com.