Truman Project Book Club
Every month, we will feature a different book written by a member of the Truman community on national security, foreign policy, and political issues. For just $50, you can purchase a featured book and receive a signed copy and an invitation to our author's call that month.
To join the book club just click here.
Forthcoming books include...
The Unforgiving Minute
By Craig M. Mullaney (April)
A West Point grad, Rhodes Scholar, and Army Ranger recounts his unique education and struggles with the hard lessons that only war can teach. Craig Mullaney, foreign policy deputy on the Obama campaign, is a proud member of the Truman community.
"The Unforgiving Minute is a wonderful, beautifully written story of the education and development of a young soldier-scholar, the coming of age of an infantry officer, and the exercise of a small unit leader's responsibilities in a tough, complex, and frustrating situation in Afghanistan. It captures particularly eloquently and movingly the relationships among those who walk point for our nation as part of that most elite of fraternities, the brotherhood of the close fight."
—General Petraeus
Written with unflinching honesty, The Unforgiving Minute is an unforgettable portrait of a young soldier as he moves from West Point, to Oxford, to Afghanistan. Grappling with the weight of his hard-earned knowledge in a fire-fight in Afghanistan, Craig comes to terms with what it really means to be a man.
In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point's Class of 2002
By Bill Murphy (May)
The dramatic story of West Point's class of 2002, the first in a generation to graduate during wartime, written by Truman Fellow Bill Murphy.
They came to West Point in a time of peace, but soon after the start of their senior year, their lives were transformed by September 11. The following June, when President George W. Bush spoke at their commencement and declared that America would "take the battle to the enemy," the men and women in the class of 2002 understood that they would be fighting on the front lines. In this stirring account of the five years following their graduation from West Point, the class experiences firsthand both the rewards and the costs of leading soldiers in the war on terror.
In a Time of War focuses on two members of the class of 2002 in particular: Todd Bryant, an amiable, funny Californian for whom military service was a family tradition; and Drew Sloan, a Truman Fellow, and the hardworking son of liberal parents from Arkansas who is determined to serve his country. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, Todd, Drew, and their classmates—the army's newest and youngest officers—lead their troops into harm's way again and again.
Meticulously reported, sweeping in scope, Bill Murphy Jr.'s powerful book follows these brave and idealistic officers—and their families—as they experience the harrowing reality of the modern battlefield. In a Time of War tells a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking story about courage, honor, and what war really means to the soldiers whose lives it defines.
Demagogue
By Michael Signer (June)
Truman Fellow and candidate for Lt. Governor Michael Signer has written what will become the classic work on the demagogue: a tyrant who owes his initial rise to the democratic support of the masses. Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, and Moqtada al-Sadr are all clear examples of this dangerous byproduct of democracy. Demagogue takes a long view of the fight to defend democracy from within, from the brutal general Cleon in ancient Athens, the demagogues who plagued the bloody French Revolution, George W. Bush's naïve democratic experiment in Iraq, and beyond. This compelling narrative weaves stories about some of history's most fascinating figures, including Adolf Hitler, Senator Joe McCarthy, and General Douglas Macarthur, and explains how humanity's urge for liberty can give rise to dark forces that threaten that very freedom. To find the solution to democracy's demagogue problem, the book delves into the stories of four great thinkers who all personally struggled with democracy—Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt.
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
By Peter M. Singer (July)
Truman Senior Fellow P. W. Singer's previous two books foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers—predictions that proved all too accurate. Now, he explores the greatest revolution in military affairs since the atom bomb—the advent of robotic warfare.
We are just beginning to see a massive shift in military technology that threatens to make the stuff of I,Robot and the Terminator all too real. More than seven-thousand robotic systems are now in Iraq. Pilots in Nevada are remotely killing terrorists in Afghanistan. Scientists are debating just how smart—and how lethal—to make their current robotic prototypes. And many of the most renowned science fiction authors are secretly consulting for the Pentagon on the next generation.
Blending historic evidence with interviews from the field, Singer vividly shows that as these technologies multiply, they will have profound effects on the front lines as well as on the politics back home. Moving humans off the battlefield makes wars easier to start, but more complex to fight. Replacing men with machines may save some lives, but will lower the morale and psychological barriers to killing. The "warrior ethos," which has long defined soldiers' identity, will erode, as will the laws of war that have governed military conflict for generations.
Paradoxically, these new technologies will also bring war to our doorstep. As other nations and even terrorist organizations start to build or buy their own robotic weapons, the robot revolution could undermine America's military preeminence. While his analysis is unnerving, there's an irresistible gee-whiz quality to the innovations Singer uncovers. Wired for War travels from Iraq to see these robots in combat to the latter-day "skunk works" in America's suburbia, where tomorrow's technologies of war are quietly being designed. In Singer's hands, the future of war is as fascinating as it is frightening.
The Most Noble Adventure: The Marshall Plan and the Time When America Helped Save Europe
By Greg Behrman (August)
In this landmark, character-driven history, Truman Fellow Greg Behrman tells the story of the Marshall Plan, the unprecedented and audacious policy through which America helped rebuild World War II-ravaged Western Europe. With nuanced, vivid prose, Behrman recreates the story of a unique American enterprise that was at once strategic, altruistic and stunningly effective. Through detailed and exhaustive research, Behrman brings this vital and dramatic epoch to life and animates the personalities that shaped it. The narrative follows the six extraordinary American statesmen — George Marshall, Will Clayton, Arthur Vandenberg, Richard Bissell, Paul Hoffman and W. Averell Harriman — who devised and implemented the Plan, as well as some of the century's most important personalities — Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, Joseph McCarthy — who are also central players in the drama told here. Both the most readable and most scholarly book on the Marshall Plan in the last forty years.
