Notable Books and Documents

Notable Books & Documents calls attention to notable works of scholarship or commentary which closely examine critical topics or challenge familiar notions of strategy. These include writers and historians such as William Robertson, Francis Parkman, and Harold Nicholson; as well as contemporary scholars including Paul Kennedy, Edward Luttwak, and Fritz Stern. Additionally, this growing collection will include influential policy documents that have shaped strategic thought and practice, as well as helpful resources for further engagement with strategic thinking.

AUTHOR

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Book: The Soldier and the State

Samuel Huntington

While the average political scientist is lucky to make a name for himself in one area of the field, Samuel Huntington has made major contributions to three: civil-military relations, democratic theory, and international relations. And while most people think of The Clash of Civilizations when they hear his name today, his most influential book—for better or worse—remains one that he wrote exactly a half-century ago: The Soldier and the State. Here, Huntington advances an institutional theory of civil-military relations, one that “focuses on the interaction of political actors played out in the specific institutional setting of government.”