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Guerrilla Lit 101: 10 Books That Are Better Than ‘The Art Of War’
West Point’s recently released list of the top 10 military classics is replete with doorstop-sized accounts of conflict from ancient to relatively modern times — but almost completely neglects insurgency, terrorism, and other forms of irregular warfare. The U.S. Military Academy’s list does a fine job of capturing the “horizontal” dynamic of clashes of roughly equal great powers armed with the most advanced weapons. But the history and shape of the world system have been just as influenced by the “vertical” axis — the unequal struggles that have seen guerrillas, bandits, and commandos waging “wars of the knife” against empires and nations. And it is this latter mode of conflict that has dominated world affairs for the past half-century — and will likely do so for at least a century to come.
With this in mind, let me supplement the West Point list. For those drawn to West Point’s recommendation to read Thucydides, I suggest taking a look also at Sallust’s The Jugurthine War. Jugurtha of Numidia (today’s northern Algeria) fought a bitter guerrilla war against Rome, some 50 years before Julius Caesar’s great campaigns, that Sallust captured with verve. He also spoke to the corruption of Roman character that came with protracted exposure to this kind of fighting.
Read more here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/24/guerrilla_lit_101
