My top five books of 2023
My reading slowed this year as I finished my dissertation and started my job as a historian with the army. I hope to pick it up in 2024, but I only got through 30 books this year. At any rate, these were my favorite books that I read in 2023.
The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today by Hal Brands
The “twilight struggle” refers to the tense Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades after World War II. Brands argues that America faces similar long-term competition against authoritarian powers like China and Russia that could determine the fate of the 21st-century world order. These new struggles unfold in the gray zone between outright peace and open war, although the danger of military conflict is growing.
By examining the key events, figures, and themes of U.S.-Soviet competition, Brands highlights enduring lessons for managing great power rivalry. He explores the origins and evolution of Cold War tensions, seminal crises like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the ominous role of nuclear weapons, competition for influence in the Third World, the propaganda value yet strategic implications of feats like the space race, the impact of domestic politics; and how the Cold War ultimately ended.
Today, the U.S. once more confronts intensifying ideological, political, economic, and military rivalries with powerful authoritarian regimes in China and Russia. Brands argues that by understanding how America both succeeded and failed in meeting past rivalry under the long shadow of nuclear weapons, contemporary leaders can rediscover skills of competing strategically, avoiding catastrophic miscalculation, and selectively engaging rivals amidst largely adversarial relationships. Ultimately, Brands aims to use the rich legacy of the Cold War “twilight struggle” to inform present-day policy and strategy, equipping U.S. officials with a nuanced grasp of long-term competition to meet similar challenges in this century while protecting national interests and global stability. The past provides indispensable lessons for navigating ominous new struggles unfolding today.
The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian
Now the longest conflict in American history, Carter Malkasian provides the first truly comprehensive account of the nearly 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. As an academic expert and former on-ground senior military advisor in Afghanistan, Malkasian draws on deep wells of local knowledge, Pashto language skills, and primary source reviews to vividly portray the war’s evolution. Malkasian examines the initial success of toppling the Taliban in 2001 and how America’s strategy shifted to ambitious nation-building aims. However, as an impatient parade of generals and ambassadors came and went, the resilience of Taliban violence overwhelmed reconstruction efforts. Malkasian lived through much of the war, lending unique insights into the diverse phases – the light footprint during the 2003 Iraq invasion, the Taliban resurgence in 2006, Obama’s surge and resets, and ultimately, the 2020 peace talks.
Malkasian explains why, despite targeted gains, America struggled to end violence or hand off security responsibilities to Afghan authorities, now unable to survive without U.S. backing. Although al-Qaeda was degraded, the U.S. could neither establish a viable central government nor understand the fundamentally localized nature of enduring Taliban strength rooted in personal ties and tribal codes. Through 20 years of policy and strategy changes, lessons went unheeded, as impatience and confusion surrounded precisely what America was trying to achieve. While inherently unpredictable, Malkasian argues the war’s outcome proved deeply disappointing given the vast resources expended attempting to reshape Afghan society through military force and imported modernization, which alienated local values. He provides an authoritative, insider account explaining why America’s astronomical investment failed to align with regional realities.
How the South won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America by Heather Cox Richardson
While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and temporarily advancing civil rights, Heather Cox Richardson argues the oligarchic Old South effectively persevered through the American West. As settlers pushed westward, seizing land through wars with Mexico and Native tribes, they established deeply entrenched racial hierarchies and resource extraction economies, creating a new white male-dominated order reminiscent of the old Southern aristocracy. Richardson traces how the mantle of expansionist individualism passed from the Eastern “yeoman farmer” mythologized in the Revolution to the Western cowboy taming supposedly empty territory. As new states entered the Union, their Dixiecrat leaders found common ground with Western individualists who opposed federal government and civil rights reforms.
Despite Constitutional amendments and New Deal investments, the South and West depended on cotton, cattle, mining, and oil to concentrate their wealth and power, which persisted beyond slavery. Richardson details how post-war “Movement Conservatives” like Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan harnessed grievances to forge an ideology linking Western identity to the Confederate cause of states’ rights and racial inequality. By debunking myths of the Civil War defeating oligarchy, Richardson reveals an ongoing struggle for the nation’s soul between egalitarian democracy and hierarchical individualism favoring private wealth over public good. The Old South still thrives through its effective rebirth in the West. Richardson warns that America has yet to fully win this war and must revive the unfinished fight for equitable opportunity.
Half-American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad by Matthew F. Delmont
In Half American, historian Matthew F. Delmont illuminates the overlooked stories of over one million African Americans who served in segregated units during WWII, performing vital support roles despite discrimination and second-class treatment. From Normandy to Iwo Jima, Black troops made indispensable contributions enabling Allied victory, yet faced limited GI Bill benefits and violence upon returning to a nation still steeped in racism.
While the “Double V” campaign sought triumph against totalitarianism abroad and over inequality at home, figures like civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall investigated violence against Black veterans. Heroes emerged, including Tuskegee Airman leader Benjamin O. Davis Jr., who battled for years to integrate the Air Force; Ella Baker, advocating for Black military families; and James Thompson, whose letter decrying the hypocrisy of fighting fascism overseas while enduring bigotry galvanized the equality struggle.
By spotlighting these hidden stories of Black courage and resilience amidst the mythologized “Good War,” Delmont reveals gaping holes in the notion of the “Greatest Generation.” He highlights the continuity of an unresolved struggle for racial justice born of contradictions between professed democratic ideals and the persisting realities of prejudice. In an era still wrestling with similar questions of war, democracy, and race, this meticulously researched retelling provides urgently relevant
Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917 by JP Clark
In this incredible book, historian and retired armor officer and strategist J.P. Clark examines how the U.S. Army’s approach to peacetime preparation dramatically evolved between the War of 1812 and WWI as differing generational experiences altered conceptions of professionalism. 19th-century officers saw generalship as an innate skill requiring little institutional preparation beyond technical disciplines. So, while maintaining equipment and instilling discipline remained vital, conceptual planning was limited. However, younger 20th-century officers increasingly embraced Progressive Era organization, seeing war’s complexity demanding trained uniformity in thought and action – notions that would have offended earlier individualistic commanders.
Clark traces how this shift transformed preparations from maintaining defenses and skills to systematic attempts to inculcate modern professional ideology. However, he shows each era sowed seeds of later successes and failures – the AEF benefiting from Progressive standardization and struggling with innately skilled commanders. By charting the U.S. Army’s evolving education and training to meet changing military realities, Clark provides a deeper context explaining strengths and weaknesses under Pershing. He demonstrates the permanence of peacetime preparation for war alongside the fluidity of what preparation entails, as military professionalism is repeatedly redefined from generation to generation.
Thanks for reading! Let me know your favorite books that you read in 2023 in the comments below!
