Recommendations

Five books on

The big picture

Human history at the widest angle: where we came from and how we got here.

1. 1
   Sapiens · Yuval Noah Harari note

   A brief, provocative history of humankind, from foragers to the age of algorithms.

2. 2
   Guns, Germs, and Steel · Jared Diamond note

   Why some societies conquered others: geography, crops and disease more than character.

3. 3
   A Short History of Humanity · Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe note

   What ancient DNA reveals about migration and the mixing of peoples.

4. 4
   Early Indians · Tony Joseph note

   The story of our ancestors and where we came from, told through genetics.

5. 5
   Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World · Jack Weatherford review

   How the Mongol empire connected the world and shaped what followed.

Five books on

The Second World War

The war that made the modern world, from Europe to the atomic bomb.

1. 1
   The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich · William L. Shirer review

   The classic history of Nazi Germany, by a correspondent who watched it happen.

2. 2
   The Second World War · J. F. C. Fuller note

   A soldier-theorist's strategic and tactical reading of the whole war.

3. 3
   World War II at Sea · Craig L. Symonds note

   The war's naval campaigns in every ocean, told as one global story.

4. 4
   Hiroshima Nagasaki · Paul Ham note

   The decision to use the bomb, and its cost, seen from both sides.

5. 5
   Embracing Defeat · John W. Dower note

   How Japan remade itself under American occupation.

Five books on

Sea power

How navies shape the fate of nations, and why maritime strategy is never only about the sea.

1. 1
   To Rule the Waves · Bruce D. Jones review

   How the oceans, shipping and naval power still decide the balance between great powers.

2. 2
   Seapower States · Andrew Lambert note

   Athens, Venice, the Dutch Republic and Britain: states that made the sea their identity.

3. 3
   The Leverage of Sea Power · Colin S. Gray note

   Why sea power has so often decided wars that were fought on land.

4. 4
   Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars · Raja Menon note

   An Indian admiral on how navies shape the land battle, the central question for India.

5. 5
   Kaigun · David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie note

   How a brilliant navy built itself around the wrong idea.

Five books on

The Pacific war at sea

The greatest naval war in history, from Pearl Harbor to Leyte Gulf.

1. 1
   At Dawn We Slept · Gordon W. Prange review

   The definitive account of Pearl Harbor and the failures that allowed it.

2. 2
   Shattered Sword · Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully note

   Midway retold from Japanese sources, overturning long-held myths.

3. 3
   Nimitz · E. B. Potter note

   The quiet admiral who won the Pacific war.

4. 4
   The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors · James D. Hornfischer note

   Destroyers against battleships off Samar in 1944.

5. 5
   The Two-Ocean War · Samuel Eliot Morison note

   The US Navy's whole war in one volume, by its official historian.

Five books on

Command and leadership

What it takes to lead in war, and what the great commanders had in common.

1. 1
   Command · Lawrence Freedman review

   Command as a political act as well as a military one, through cases since 1945.

2. 2
   Command in War · Martin van Creveld review

   How commanders from Napoleon to Vietnam coped with uncertainty and the flow of information.

3. 3
   Supreme Command · Eliot A. Cohen review

   Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill and Ben-Gurion, and why statesmen must question their generals.

4. 4
   The Mask of Command · John Keegan note

   Alexander, Wellington, Grant and Hitler: four styles of leadership.

5. 5
   Call Sign Chaos · Jim Mattis and Bing West note

   A modern general's case that reading is the foundation of leadership.

Five books on

Strategy

The ideas behind how wars are planned, fought and ended.

1. 1
   Strategy: A History · Lawrence Freedman note

   How strategy has been understood in war, politics and business.

2. 2
   On Grand Strategy · John Lewis Gaddis note

   Aligning ends and means, from Xerxes to Roosevelt.

3. 3
   Military Strategy · J. C. Wylie note

   A short, sharp general theory of power, written by a naval officer.

4. 4
   Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace · Edward N. Luttwak note

   The paradoxical logic of strategy, where the obvious road is often the worst.

5. 5
   Modern Strategy · Colin S. Gray note

   How the enduring nature of strategy plays out in a changing world.

Five books on

India's wars

How independent India has fought, and what each war taught it.

1. 1
   India's Wars · Arjun Subramaniam note

   A military history of independent India from 1947 to 1971.

2. 2
   1965: A Western Sunrise · Shiv Kunal Verma review

   A detailed and unsparing account of the 1965 war with Pakistan.

3. 3
   Surrender at Dacca · J. F. R. Jacob note

   The 1971 campaign in the east, from the Chief of Staff of Eastern Command.

4. 4
   Kargil: From Surprise to Victory · V. P. Malik note

   The Kargil war told by the Army Chief who fought it.

5. 5
   Full Spectrum · Arjun Subramaniam note

   India's conflicts from 1972 to 2020, from Siachen to Balakot.

Five books on

Partition and the making of modern India

1947 and after: how a subcontinent was divided and a republic was built.

1. 1
   Indian Summer · Alex von Tunzelmann review

   The last months of the Raj, and the people who ended it.

2. 2
   Shattered Lands · Sam Dalrymple review

   Five partitions that remade the map of Asia, not one.

3. 3
   Dethroned · John Zubrzycki review

   Patel, Menon and the integration of the princely states.

4. 4
   Another India · Pratinav Anil review

   The making of India's Muslim minority in the decades after 1947.

5. 5
   Nehru · Shashi Tharoor review

   The man who did most to shape the idea of independent India.

Five books on

India and China

The relationship that will shape Asia, seen from New Delhi.

1. 1
   India's China Challenge · Ananth Krishnan review

   A journalist's journey through China's rise and what it means for India.

2. 2
   The Fractured Himalaya · Nirupama Rao review

   A former Foreign Secretary on the roots of the boundary dispute.

3. 3
   India Versus China · Kanti Bajpai review

   Why the two Asian giants are not friends, and are unlikely to become so.

4. 4
   The Long Game · Vijay Gokhale note

   How China negotiates with India, from a diplomat who sat across the table.

5. 5
   Red Roulette · Desmond Shum review

   Wealth, power and fear inside China's elite, from an insider.

Five books on

Pakistan and Afghanistan

India's western neighbourhood, its armies, its tribes and its long wars.

1. 1
   Return of a King · William Dalrymple review

   The First Anglo-Afghan War, and why Afghanistan breaks empires.

2. 2
   The Pashtuns · Tilak Devasher review

   A contested history of the people who straddle the Durand Line.

3. 3
   The Return of the Taliban · Hassan Abbas review

   How the Taliban came back, and what they want now.

4. 4
   The Idea of Pakistan · Stephen P. Cohen note

   The ideas, institutions and army that hold Pakistan together.

5. 5
   Pakistan: Courting the Abyss · Tilak Devasher note

   An Indian analyst on the faultlines inside Pakistan.

Five books on

West Asia

Oil, faith, empire and rivalry in the region India calls West Asia.

1. 1
   West Asia at War · Talmiz Ahmad review

   An Indian diplomat on the region's conflicts and the powers behind them.

2. 2
   The Twilight War · David Crist review

   Three decades of secret conflict between the United States and Iran.

3. 3
   Six Days of War · Michael B. Oren note

   June 1967 and the making of the modern Middle East.

4. 4
   Original Sin · Stanly Johny note

   Israel, Palestine and the revenge of old West Asia.

5. 5
   Tomorrow Is Yesterday · Robert Malley and Hussein Agha note

   Two veteran negotiators on why the peace process failed.

Five books on

The Cold War and great powers

How great powers compete, and how the last great rivalry was managed and ended.

1. 1
   The Cold War · Odd Arne Westad review

   The Cold War as a global struggle, not only a Soviet-American one.

2. 2
   Diplomacy · Henry Kissinger note

   Statecraft from Richelieu to the end of the Cold War.

3. 3
   World Order · Henry Kissinger note

   Rival ideas of order in Europe, Islam, China and America.

4. 4
   The Story of Russia · Orlando Figes review

   How Russia has told and retold its own history.

5. 5
   Tomorrow, the World · Stephen Wertheim review

   How America decided to become the world's dominant power.

Five books on

Money, markets and progress

Why some nations grow rich, and how money, trade and materials shape power.

1. 1
   Why Nations Fail · Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson note

   Institutions, not geography or culture, decide prosperity.

2. 2
   The Psychology of Money · Morgan Housel review

   Behaviour matters more than knowledge when it comes to money.

3. 3
   What Went Wrong with Capitalism · Ruchir Sharma review

   How easy money and big government bent the free market.

4. 4
   A Splendid Exchange · William J. Bernstein note

   How trade shaped the world from Mesopotamia to the present.

5. 5
   Material World · Ed Conway note

   Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium: the stuff the modern world is built on.

Five books on

Technology and the future

The machines and ideas reshaping power, work and society.

1. 1
   Chip War · Chris Miller review

   How the semiconductor became the world's most critical technology.

2. 2
   The Coming Wave · Mustafa Suleyman review

   AI, synthetic biology and the dilemma of containing them.

3. 3
   Nexus · Yuval Noah Harari review

   Information networks from the Stone Age to AI.

4. 4
   Power and Progress · Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson review

   Who actually benefits from technological change, and why.

5. 5
   Co-Intelligence · Ethan Mollick review

   A practical guide to living and working with AI.

Five books on

Reading about reading

For readers curious about reading itself: how people have read, and what books have meant to them.