The Futura Doctrina 2025 Reading List
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Jim Mattis
1 min read
The article opens with a quote from General Mattis about the importance of reading for military professionals. Understanding his career, philosophy, and influence on modern military thinking provides essential context for why his endorsement of reading carries weight.
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C. S. Lewis
14 min read
The author quotes Lewis on reading ('We read to know we are not alone'). While known for Narnia, Lewis's broader work on literature, philosophy, and the purpose of reading offers deeper insight into why this quote resonates in a military professional context.
By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead. General J. Mattis, USMC (ret.)
I have a great passion for reading that I like to share with others.
Reading widely and in depth was fundamental to my professional development for decades and it remains a key part of my daily routine. On a normal day, I read for about 3–4 hours, with 1–2 history books and a non-fiction novel going at the same time. I also attempt to peruse as many journal articles and blog posts as I can. It is one of the ways I try to keep learning and to stay current with developments in modern war, national security affairs and geopolitics.
Almost a decade ago, I began producing an annual reading list, with the first one being published in 2017 and my most recent one published here in 2024. (You can read the 2024 list here).
The objective of my producing these reading lists was to provide a “starter kit” for young professionals that contains a few essential books, journals, blogs, podcasts, and Twitter feeds. To this end, I keep my annual list to the size of a single, A4 page printed out. It is hard to keep it at this size given the enormous amount of high-quality material available.
Like all of my previous lists, the 2025 list is not just about books. It provides a range of other resources that permit military and national security professionals, as well as others with an interest in these matters, to immerse themselves in a global professional discourse about strategy, military affairs, modern war and strategic competition. Never before have we possessed the range of networking opportunities afforded by the digital age that allow us to reach out to fellow travellers seeking enlightenment about the modern war, national security and the profession of arms.
The list contains reading resources that stretch from the classics of antiquity through to speculation (some informed, some fictional) about future war. It has selections from military history and contemporary operations.
C.S. Lewis once noted that “We read to know we are not alone.” Reading drives us to look beyond
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