Reading List
Elliot Ackerman
Novelist and Former Marine
Elliot Ackerman served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine and CIA paramilitary officer, receiving the Silver Star and Purple Heart, then turned to fiction with Green on Blue, narrated by an Afghan boy rather than an American soldier. He has since written Waiting for Eden, the memoir Places and Names, and 2034, a novel of a future war co-written with Admiral James Stavridis. His reading runs to books about duty, empire and the people who pay for both.
The Little Drummer Girl
by John le Carré · 1983 · Fiction
“As she enters this theater of the real, she quickly loses track of whose side she is on.” — via Article
The Man Who Came Uptown
by George Pelecanos · 2018 · Fiction
“No one has done more to chronicle life in Washington, D.C., than George Pelecanos.” — via Article
Hero of Two Worlds
The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution
by Mike Duncan · 2021 · Biography
“Duncan does a fantastic job telling his story, which is a thrilling adventure, one filled with long odds, battles won, and tragic disillusionment.” — via Article
Starship Troopers
by Robert A. Heinlein · 1959 · Fiction
“It is a meditation on citizenship and the role of the soldier in society. When I served in the Marine infantry, it was required reading in our platoon.” — via Article
Marie Antoinette
The Portrait of an Average Woman
by Stefan Zweig · 1932 · Biography
“Zweig was one of the greatest writers of the early 20th century. An Austrian-born Jew, he wrote from the perspective of his own time, one that was hurtling toward the catastrophe of world war.” — via Article
The Singularity Is Near
When Humans Transcend Biology
by Ray Kurzweil · 2005 · Nonfiction
“In the future, when technology allows our intelligence and even our personalities to upload into supercomputers, what will it mean to be human?” — via Article