Priority Reading
Ansary, Tamim. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. (PublicAffairs, 2009). 416 pp.
Ansary, Tamim. Games without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan. (PublicAffairs, 2010) 416 pp.
Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. (Princeton University Press, 2010.) 568 pp.
Caroe, Sir Olaf. The Pathans: 550 BC – AD 1957. (Oxford University Press, 1984). 554 pp.
Chayes, Sarah. The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban. (Penguin, 2007). 400 pp.
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. (Penguin Press, 2004). 720 pp.
Dupree, Louis. Afghanistan. (Oxford University Press, 2002). 804 pp.
Ewans, Martin. Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics. (Harper Perennial, 2002). 368 pp.
Kilcullen, David. The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. (Oxford University Press, 2009). 384 pp.
Metrinko, Michael.  The American Military Advisor: Dealing with Senior Foreign Officials in the Islamic World. U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, 2008.
Rashid, Ahmed. Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. (Penguin, revised edition 2009).
Background and Color
Anderson, Jon Lee. The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan. (Grove Press, 2003). 256 pp.
Ang, Soon and Lynne Van Dynne. Handbook of Cultural Intelligence: Theory Measurement and Application. (M.E. Sharpe., 2008). 414 pp.
Azoy, G. Whitney. Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan. (Waveland Press, 2002). 176 pp.
Edwards, David B. Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad. (University of California Press, 2002). 376 pp.
Elphinstone, Mountstuart. An Account Of The Kingdom Of Caubul: And Its Dependencies In Persia, Tartary, And India (1815). (Kessinger Publishing, 2008). 740 pp. (Available for free download from Google Books.)
Emadi, Hafizullah. Culture and Customs of Afghanistan. (Greenwood Press, 2005). 252 pp.
Entezar, Ehsan M. Afghanistan 101: Understanding Afghan Culture. (Xlibris, 2007). 169 pp.
Filkins, Dexter. The Forever War. (Knopf, 2008). 384 pp.
Griffiths, John C. Afghanistan: A History of Conflict. (Carlton Books, 2001). 272 pp.
Guistozzi, Antonio. Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. (Columbia University Press, 2009). 224 pp.
Hiro, Dilip. Between Marx and Mohammad: The Changing Face of Central Asia. (Harpercollins, 1995). 432 pp.
Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. (fiction) (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007). 384 pp.
Jamal, Arif. The Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir. (Melville House, 2009). 352 pp.
Kakar, M. Hassan. A Political And Diplomatic History of Afghanistan, 1863-1901. (Brill Academic Publishers, 2006)
Lamb, Christina. The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan. (Harper Perennial, 2004). 384 pp.
Livermore, David. Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The New Secret to Success. (AMACOM, 2009). 240 pp.
Macintye, Ben. The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). 368 pp.
Maley, William. Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban. (NY University Press, 1998).
Maley, William. Afghanistan Wars. (Palgrave, 2009).
Michner, James A. Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan. (fiction) (Random House, 2003). 352 pp.
Roy, Oliver. Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan. (Cambridge University Press, 1986). 260 pp.
Schmidle, Nicholas. To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan. (Henry Holt and Co., 2009). 272 pp.
Seierstad, Asne. The Bookseller of Kabul. (fiction) (Back Bay Books, 2004). 320 pp.
Thomas, David C. and Kerr C. Inkston. Cultural Intelligence: Theory Measurement and Application. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009). 264 pp.Â
Counterinsurgency
Hammes, Thomas X. The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century. (Zenith Press, 2006). 336 pp.
Nagl, John A. Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya to Vietnam. (University of Chicago Press, 2005). 280 pp.
Robinson, Linda. Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq. (PublicAffairs, 2008). 432 pp.
CENTCOM Recommendations
Ali, Tariq. The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. (Scribner, 2008). 304 pp.
Allen, Charles. God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad. (Da Capo Press, 2007). 384 pp.
Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. (Berkley Trade, 2003). 416 pp.
Hussain, Zahid. Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam. (Columbia University Press, 2008). 232 pp.
Kaplan, Robert D. Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Vintage, 2001). 304 pp.
Lewis, Bernard. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. (Random House, 2004). 224 pp.
Macrory, Patrick. Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan, 1842. (TheLyons Press, 2007). 288 pp.
Muthuswamy, Moorthy S. Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War. (Prometheus Books, 2009). 287 pp.
Peters, Gretchen. Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda. (Thomas Dunne Books, 2009). 320 pp.
Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban. (Da Capo Press, 2009). 392 pp.
ISAF Recommendations
Lockhart, Clare and Ashraf Ghani. Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. (Oxford, 2008).
Rasanayagam, Angelo. Afghanistan: A Modern History. (I. B. Tauris, 2005). 336 pp.
Sanger, David. The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power. (Harmony, 2009). 528 pp.
Taber, Robert. The War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerilla Warfare. (Potomac Books, 2002). 224 pp.
Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World. (W. W. Norton, 2009). 336 pp.
NTM-A/CSTC-A Recommendations
Feiffer, Greg.  The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan. (Harper Collins, 2009).
Hopkirk, Peter. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, (Kodansha International, 1992).
Jones, Seth.  In the Graveyard of Empires. (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009).
Lawrence, T.E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. (Oxford University Press, 1926).
MacLean, Fitzroy. Eastern Approaches (1999 reprint ed.). Penguin Global.
Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. (Yale University Press, 2001).
Scheuer, Michael. Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam & the Future of America. (Brassey’s Inc., 2003).
Scheuer, Michael. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. (Brassey’s Inc., 2004).
Former MoDA Recommendations:
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. (Penguin Press, 2004). 720 pp.
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner.
Hopkirk, Peter. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, (Kodansha International, 1992).
Newby, Eric.  A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.
Stewart, Rory. The Places in Between.  (Harvest Books, 2006). 320 pp.