Books Recommended by Marine Corps

Eugene Bondurant Sledge (1923–2001) authored the landmark World War II memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, hailed as one of history’s most visceral combat narratives.

A Marine mortarman who endured the harrowing battles of Peleliu and Okinawa, Sledge translated his frontline trauma into an unflinching chronicle of the Pacific Theater’s brutality, cementing his authority as a definitive voice on infantry warfare.

His academic pivot saw him earn a Ph.D. in Botany and teach zoology at the University of Montevallo for 24 years, though his legacy rests on his wartime writings. His sequel, China Marine, extends his reflection on post-war adjustment.

Adapted into HBO’s The Pacific, With the Old Breed remains essential reading for Marine officers and a cornerstone of war literature curricula.

1. Eugene Sledge reveals war's true horror lies in dehumanizing filth and decay beyond combat.
2. Marine brotherhood and discipline become lifelines for survival amid unimaginable battlefield chaos.
3. Maintaining sanity requires constant psychological warfare against war's relentless trauma and despair.
4. War erodes humanity leading to barbaric acts from all sides in combat.
5. Patriotism and moral duty sustain soldiers through war's most brutal moments.
6. Combat transforms idealistic recruits into hardened veterans bearing irreversible psychological scars.
7. True valor manifests through quiet endurance of relentless hardship and suffering.
8. Courage means mastering fear while performing duty amid extreme danger.
9. Soldiers confront their expendability in a machinery of organized madness.
10. Constant exposure to death and decay strips away fundamental human dignity.
11. War trauma remains fundamentally inexpressible to those without combat experience.
12. Battlefields force dual wars: against external enemies and internal psychological collapse.

Jim Mattis, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and retired four-star Marine Corps general, and Bing West, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and combat Marine, co-authored the bestselling leadership memoir Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead.

Mattis draws from his 44-year military career spanning Iraq, Afghanistan, and strategic command roles, while West contributes his expertise as a defense analyst and author of acclaimed works like The Village.

Structured into three leadership tiers—Direct, Executive, and Strategic—the book merges battlefield wisdom with insights on decision-making in complex geopolitical environments. Mattis previously co-edited Warriors & Citizens: American Views of Our Military during his Hoover Institution fellowship, while West’s portfolio includes No True Glory and other military histories.

Lauded by The Wall Street Journal as “a four-star general’s five-star memoir,” Call Sign Chaos debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into 15 languages, solidifying its status as a modern leadership classic.

1. Push decisions to the lowest competent level to empower frontline leadership.
2. Master the basics of your role before innovating or complicating strategies.
3. Lead with competence, caring, and conviction to inspire unwavering unit loyalty.
4. Foster aggressive competition within your team to drive constant improvement and readiness.
5. Balance strategic patience with decisive action when confronting entrenched adversaries.
6. Prioritize relentless training to outthink and outperform adversaries in chaotic environments.
7. Decentralize authority to maintain speed and adaptability in high-stakes situations.
8. Cultivate a reading habit to sharpen strategic thinking and historical perspective.
9. Engage in brutal honesty during planning to expose and mitigate critical risks.
10. Build trust through transparency and shared hardship to strengthen team cohesion.
11. Maintain ethical clarity when navigating complex political-military operational boundaries.
12. Prepare peace through dominant readiness rather than hoping for ideal conditions.

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and pioneering behavioral economist, authored the groundbreaking bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), which revolutionized understanding of human decision-making.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1934, Kahneman reshaped economics through his integration of psychological research, earning the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His work at Princeton University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem laid the foundation for behavioral economics, with Thinking, Fast and Slow synthesizing decades of research on cognitive biases, heuristics, and the dual-process theory of "System 1" (intuitive) and "System 2" (deliberative) thinking.

The book’s insights into irrational decision patterns became essential reading in business, public policy, and psychology. Kahneman later co-authored Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (2021), examining inconsistency in professional decisions.

Translated into over 40 languages, Thinking, Fast and Slow has sold millions of copies worldwide and remains a cornerstone of behavioral science literature, cited by academics and practitioners alike for its transformative perspective on human rationality.

1. Kahneman’s System 1 operates automatically, System 2 requires deliberate mental effort.
2. Cognitive ease tricks the brain into trusting familiar ideas over factual accuracy.
3. Anchoring bias skews decisions toward initial information, even when irrelevant.
4. Overconfidence grows when System 1 substitutes complex questions with simpler ones.
5. Loss aversion makes potential losses feel twice as powerful as gains.
6. WYSIATI (“What You See Is All There Is”) fuels narrative fallacies.
7. Mental fatigue triggers reliance on error-prone intuition instead of analysis.
8. Halo effect causes biased judgments by overgeneralizing single traits.
9. Framing identical information differently alters emotional responses and decisions.
10. Availability heuristic prioritizes recent or vivid memories over statistical truths.
11. Prospect theory explains why people take irrational risks to avoid losses.
12. Priming effects unconsciously shape behavior through environmental cues and language.

John F. Wukovits is a military historian and bestselling author of One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle for Tarawa, specializing in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Michigan State University (M.A. in American History), he has researched WWII for over three decades, conducting nearly 400 veteran interviews to inform his narratives. His expertise extends to publications like Naval History and WWII History, with acclaimed works including Tin Can Titans—winner of the 2018 RADM Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature—and Hell from the Heavens, currently in film adaptation.

Wukovits crafts visceral battle accounts through firsthand perspectives, notably capturing Tarawa's brutal combat via Marines' personal stories. His extensive bibliography also features Pacific Alamo and American Commando, establishing his authority in wartime historiography.

Wukovits' dedication to preserving veterans' experiences has solidified his reputation as a meticulous chronicler of Pacific conflict.

1. Tarawa's three-day battle cost 6,000 lives in relentless close-quarters combat.
2. Japanese fortifications transformed Betio Island into an impregnable "Hell's Acre".
3. Marine amphibious tactics evolved through Tarawa's brutal coral reef obstacles.
4. Unprecedented Marine bravery overcame point-blank Japanese defenses in 75 hours.
5. Tarawa proved remote Pacific islands demanded extreme sacrifice for strategic gains.
6. Personal accounts reveal the trauma behind "one square mile of hell".
7. Inadequate pre-invasion intelligence underestimated Tarawa's deadly terrain challenges.
8. The battle's legacy reshaped U.S. naval bombardment strategies for future assaults.
9. Wukovits honors unrecognized heroes through survivors' letters and family testimonies.
10. Tarawa became a defining symbol of Marine Corps resilience under impossible odds.