The Chief of Staff reading list provides Airmen of all ranks a guide to further their education and expertise. The section below contains reviews by AF senior leaders of several of the CSAF books. More reviews will be added as they are received.

• 

  CSAF Book Review: Unbroken

  Col Robert C. Owen, USAF, Retired
  Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
  

  This book is no easy read. The problem is not with Laura Hillenbrand’s writing. Any historian would envy her skillful weave of memoir, psychology, eugenics, B-24s, faith, and other subjects that would be disjointed were they not ingredients in the life of Louis Sylvie Zamperini. Nor is it with the unbelievable harshness of Zamperini’s tale of surviving 46 days on a raft in the Pacif...

• 

  CSAF Book Review: Airpower for Strategic Effect

  BENJAMIN S. LAMBETH
  Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
  

  In this expansive assessment of airpower’s steady rise in salience from its fledgling days to today’s combat involvements, Colin Gray, a prolific strategist of long-standing scholarly repute, has produced an outstanding tutorial for airmen by addressing the air weapon in the context of what he calls its abiding “strategic narrative.” His book is not about the tangibles o...

• 

  CSAF Book Review: Start with Why

  Dr. Karen W. Currie
  Air Force Research Institute
  

  During Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, he explained that when he was 17 he read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” If this idea intrigues you then you need to read Simon Sinek’s Start with Why.  A trained ethnographer and experienced mar...

• 

  CSAF Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

  Maj Gen Mark O. Schissler, USAF
  Director A5/8/9, USAFE HQ
  

  Many of us have drunk the tea. Many have personal experiences and stories set in the rugged mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan during the war on terror. Greg Mortenson went there as a scraggly mountain climber and emerged as a humanitarian leader. The story of his failed attempt to climb a mountain called K2 and the people who came to his aid forms the setting for a lifetime of work. Despite...

• 

  CSAF Book Review: Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It

  Lt Gen David S. Fadok, USAF
  Commander, Air University
  

  A few years back, the US Air Force presented me with a professional development opportunity that proved to be a tremendous personal challenge. I received orders to become director of war-fighting integration in SAF/XC, our service’s communications and computers directorate in the Pentagon. At the time of assignment notification, my beautiful bride astutely observed, “You know in thi...

• 

  CSAF Book Review: Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power

  Gen Edward A. Rice Jr., USAF
  Commander, Air Education and Training Command
  

  Those familiar with Robert Kaplan's work will know that he has a reputation for unorthodox analysis that is rooted in his broad and deep study of history and supplemented by his extensive travels through the countries about which he writes. I have always found Kaplan to be provocative and thoughtful, and his articles and books are more than worth the time it takes to work through them. One of h...