The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War, by H. W. Brands

The relief of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur by President Harry S. Truman remains one of the most controversial and debated wartime command decisions made in the military history of the United States. By April 1951, Douglas MacArthur was at the peak of his game as a military leader

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Lawrence Wright has provided the mili- tary professional an excellent primer into the world of those who see the United States as a threat. The Arab world remains little understood by most Americans. It takes Wright nearly five hundred pages to lay out the com- plex tale of modern Islamic fundamen- talism. It is no surprise that Osama Bin Laden is a key player, and Wright gives him center stage. Bin Laden is the son of a wealthy Yemeni who through grit and hard work earned the favor of the ruling family in Saudi Arabia for bold- ness in civil engineering projects that helped Saudi Arabia advance into the twentieth century