Best War Books: 50 Picks Recommended by CEOs

Sun Tzu’s thirteen short chapters cover weapons, terrain, logistics, morale and discipline, and treat fighting as a costly last resort to be kept brief through diplomacy, economics and spies. Ray Dalio urges reading it to understand how China approaches war.

Barbara W. Tuchman follows the opening weeks of the First World War, from the prewar plans of Germany, France, Britain and Russia through the hour by hour outbreak to the early battles before the Marne. Elon Musk and James Mattis both recommend it.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s narrator is a South Vietnamese army captain secretly spying for the communists, who flees to Los Angeles after Saigon falls. Bill Gates valued it for showing the Vietnam War through Vietnamese people trapped between the two sides.

Nathaniel Fick traces his making as a Marine officer, from Quantico to command of a platoon in Afghanistan and then a Recon unit as war with Iraq approaches. Ramit Sethi called the account of his platoon after 9/11 harrowing, with lessons any leader can use.

Steven Pressfield retells the battle of Thermopylae through Xeones, a wounded squire who survives and narrates to the Persian king Xerxes, with close attention to Spartan training and fighting in the phalanx. James Mattis lists it among his favorite books.

Robert Coram profiles John Boyd, the fighter pilot who rewrote air combat tactics, shaped the design of the F-15 and F-16 and built a theory of strategy the Marine Corps adopted. Ryan Holiday ranks Boyd as perhaps the top strategist after World War II.

Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general who fought Napoleon, sets out general principles of war: friction that wrecks plans, the fog that forces quick decisions, and war as policy pursued by other means. Reid Hoffman read it as a boy.

B. H. Liddell Hart makes the case for Sherman as the leading military mind of the Civil War, following his campaigns from first Bull Run to the 1865 surrender of Joseph Johnston. Ryan Holiday came away thinking about the general constantly.

Joseph Heller’s bombardier Yossarian, stationed on an Italian island in World War II, finds his own commanders a bigger threat than the enemy as the required mission count keeps rising. Brian Burkhart read it as a lesson in questioning how authority thinks.

Michael Beschloss studies American presidents who took the country to war, from the War of 1812 to Vietnam, and how they handled Congress, courts, protesters and the strain. Bill Gates drew lessons on wartime presidential leadership from it.

Ernst Jünger’s memoir records four years of trench fighting on the Western Front, from private to company commander on the Somme, at Arras and Cambrai, wounded seven times along the way. Elon Musk recommends it.

Julius Caesar narrates his campaigns in Gaul and his crossing into Britain, including the revolt under Vercingetorix, written in the third person while still in the field and still the main source on the conflict, though historians treat it as propaganda. Elon Musk recommends it.

Anthony Doerr’s novel follows a blind French girl who flees occupied Paris for Saint-Malo and a German orphan with a gift for radios, whose lives move toward each other during World War II. Barack Obama has recommended it.

Gordon M. Goldstein reconstructs how the United States slid into the Vietnam War through the advice of McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser who late in life chose to revisit his decisions with Goldstein. Barack Obama has recommended it.

Phil Klay, a Marine veteran of Anbar Province, writes twelve stories about the Iraq War, narrated by soldiers, a mortuary affairs Marine, a chaplain and a diplomat, several dealing with the return home. Barack Obama has recommended it.

David Halberstam traces the Vietnam War back to the clever advisers of the Kennedy and Johnson years and shows how slow escalation postponed criticism while closing off both victory and withdrawal. Barack Obama counts it among his favorite books.

Norman Mailer follows a recon platoon fighting the Japanese on an invented Pacific island in World War II, drawing on his own service, while a lieutenant and a general argue over command. Barack Obama has recommended it.

Christopher Clark argues that no single power caused the First World War, tracing a chain of choices from the Balkans through the two alliance blocs to the July Crisis. Sam Altman thought of it while watching the war in Ukraine unfold.

Paul Scharre, a former Army Ranger who worked on Pentagon policy, examines weapons that pick and strike targets without human decision, along with the legal, ethical and safety problems they raise. Bill Gates praised its balanced case for and against machine warfare.

Evan S. Connell reconstructs the fight at the Little Bighorn and the Plains Indian Wars around it, through portraits of Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the officers on each side. Joe Rogan found it intense and recommends it strongly.

Antony Beevor recounts the battle for Stalingrad from the German assault of 1942 to the encirclement and surrender, told largely through soldiers on both sides and trapped civilians, drawing on archives, letters and diaries. Richard Branson recommends it.

Iris Chang documents the killing, rape and looting after Japanese troops took Nanking in 1937, told from the viewpoints of Chinese victims, Japanese soldiers and Western residents who ran a safety zone. Jordan B. Peterson recommends it.

Max Hastings covers the first year of the First World War, from failed diplomacy to the Marne, Ypres and Tannenberg, mixing the views of generals with those of soldiers and civilians from seven nations. James Mattis lists it among his favorite books.

Field Marshal William Slim tells how he took a beaten British army retreating from Burma, rebuilt its morale and drove the Japanese out. James Mattis ranks Slim as the best British commander in the field during that war.

H. R. McMaster, then an Army major, uses declassified transcripts and taped calls to argue that Lyndon Johnson and his advisers lost the Vietnam War in Washington between 1963 and 1965, with the Joint Chiefs shut out. James Mattis lists it among his favorites.

Anton Myrer follows Sam Damon from private in the First World War to senior field commander, set against a rival who rises through staff jobs and politics; Marine sergeants are required to read it. James Mattis lists it among his favorites.

Guy Sajer recalls joining the German infantry in 1942 and fighting on the Russian front with the Grossdeutschland division as hunger, cold and constant shelling took over, though some details have been questioned. James Mattis lists it among his favorite books.

Michael Shaara recreates the three days of Gettysburg mostly through its commanders, including Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, who argued against Lee’s plan, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. James Mattis lists it among his favorite books.

Max Boot argues that America’s small undeclared conflicts, from the Barbary Wars and the Philippines to Somalia, Bosnia and Afghanistan, did much to build its power, and asks what role the military should play next. James Mattis lists it among his favorites.

Laura Hillenbrand follows Louis Zamperini from Olympic runner to Army Air Forces bombardier, whose plane went down in the Pacific in 1943, leaving him adrift for 47 days and then held in Japanese camps. James Mattis lists it among his favorites.

E. B. Sledge, a Marine mortarman, describes the fear, filth and brutality of island fighting on Peleliu and Okinawa from notes kept in a pocket Bible. James Mattis said Sledge wrote for generations of infantrymen about the bonds formed in battle.

Colonel David H. Hackworth recounts his army life from Korea through Vietnam and his public break with the war in 1971, an indictment of Pentagon thinking. Jocko Willink has reread it since midway through his SEAL career for its lessons on battlefield tactics.

Dick Winters, who took over Easy Company after jumping into France on D-Day, tells its story from Normandy to the Bulge and Germany using his wartime diary. Jocko Willink values such memoirs for showing how people react under pressure.

Bob Hoffman describes life at the front with American troops in France in World War I, centered on five days at Fismette fought without artillery support, food or medical care. Jocko Willink values it for what it shows about human nature.

Bruce Catton follows the Army of the Potomac under Grant through the last year of the Civil War, from the Wilderness and Cold Harbor to Appomattox, using soldiers’ letters and diaries. Ryan Holiday ranks Catton’s writing among the best nonfiction he knows.

Thucydides, himself an Athenian general, chronicles the long war between Athens and Sparta season by season and explains events through human decisions rather than the gods. Ryan Holiday treats it as a portrait of great military minds, Pericles and Alcibiades among them.

B. H. Liddell Hart tests his theory of the indirect approach, unbalancing an enemy at the lowest cost, across military history from the Greeks and Persians to guerrilla war. Ryan Holiday rates Hart above Clausewitz as a writer on strategy.

Bruce Catton covers the whole Civil War in one volume, from the tense months before Fort Sumter to the death of Lincoln, joining its scale with the experience of those who fought. Ryan Holiday sends anyone wanting to understand the war to Catton.

John Keegan tells the Second World War in order across every theater, stopping on five battles that each show a kind of modern fighting, such as Midway for carrier war and Berlin for city combat. Casey Neistat has read it three times.

Erich Maria Remarque, a veteran of the German front, follows the schoolboy Paul Bäumer from patriotic enlistment into the misery of the trenches and the gulf between soldiers and home. Ramit Sethi says it deserves a second reading after school.

Michael Howard surveys a thousand years of European warfare, from Norse raids and medieval knights to industrial mass war, showing how fighting and society shaped each other. A later edition carries the story to Iraq and the War on Terror.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, an American chaplain’s assistant captured by the Germans, survives the bombing of Dresden in a slaughterhouse as Vonnegut did, while slipping back and forth through his own life. Bernard Tan recommends it.

Winston S. Churchill opens his history of the Second World War with the years from Versailles to Munich and Britain’s entry into the war, mixing memoir with documents of the time and judging the failure of appeasement. Stephane Grand recommends it.

Harold Moore, the commander, and Joseph Galloway, the only reporter there throughout, reconstruct the November 1965 battles in the Ia Drang Valley, where about 450 cavalrymen were surrounded by some 2,000 North Vietnamese troops. Stephane Grand recommends it.

Mainly a leadership manual, the book by SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin is rooted in their combat in Ramadi, pairing battlefield accounts with principles such as Cover and Move and Decentralized Command. Tim Ferriss said he loved it.

William Manchester’s life of Douglas MacArthur weighs the general’s courage and military record against his vanity and insubordination, and casts him as a modern Caesar; it is a full biography rather than a war history. Elon Musk and James Mattis recommend it.

Graham Greene’s novel is set in Saigon during the French war in Vietnam, where a jaded British correspondent clashes with an idealistic young American over politics and a Vietnamese woman. Barack Obama and Richard Branson both recommend it.

Steve Coll’s history is mainly about intelligence work, following the CIA in Afghanistan from the covert campaign against Soviet troops to the failed hunt for bin Laden before September 11. Bogdan Savonea valued its view of what happened behind the scenes.

Ron Chernow’s biography covers Grant’s whole life, but its middle follows the Union commander through Shiloh, Vicksburg and the defeat of Robert E. Lee before his presidency. Bill Clinton praised it for restoring a sense of Grant’s achievements.

William L. Shirer’s history is mainly about the Nazi state, from Hitler’s birth to its collapse in 1945, but it carries the war in Europe through captured documents and generals’ diaries. Mark Manson calls it the most authoritative account of the war and the Holocaust.