Six Books the Next U.S. President Must Read

James Jay Carafano

Security, Americas

Advice for handling the world’s weightiest challenges.

There is too much trivia on the campaign trail. A plethora of promises and policy proposals reveal very little of how future presidents govern in practice. There is no résumé for president. The real measure of presidential timber rests in the person, and that’s hard to assess from a campaign stump speech. One indicator that would give great insight into how great a president might be—whether they are the right leader for these times—would be getting a sneak peek at their bookshelf (or their Kindle).

Here are six books that ought to be on the next president’s bookshelf. If they are not, the candidates ought to read them while they’re out on the campaign trail—and leave them conspicuously by their plane seat. A thumbed-through copy of these reads would send strong signals that the nation’s leader is rightly focused on the nation’s challenges—and thinking about how to make America prevail and soar over a troubled world.

1. Once an Eagle, Anton Myrer.

We are a nation at war. Our wars are not going well. Our military is not in great shape. For winning wars and leading well, few aspects of presidential leadership are more vital than getting the relationship between presidents and their generals right.

A big part of mastering the civil-military relations challenge is putting in place leaders who do the right thing for the right reasons. Nothing says a commander-in-chief cares about picking responsible military leaders more than having one of this nation’s most iconic military novels, Anton Myrer’s Once an Eagle, at the Lincoln bedroom bedside. Myrer’s tale follows the Manichaean careers of two fictional officers: Sam Damon, the selfless servant, and Courtney Massengale, the self-serving self-promoter. We need many more like Damon. This book should be paired with Eliot Cohen’s Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, perhaps the best blueprint for getting civil-military relations right ever written.