With Colin Powell’s book still topping the non-fiction charts, all those who are buying it and not even opening it might consider these genuinely great works of non-fiction by generals past:
The Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides. Arguably the most important book ever written by a military man, The Peloponnesian War is the account of the conflict between Athens and Sparta that marked the end of the greatest experiment in democracy until our nation’s founding. Thucydides began another military tradition in the book’s first line by referring to himself in the third person.
The Gallic Wars, by Julius Caesar. We’re not sure it’s literature, but we learned Latin by it and chances are our grandchildren will too.
Memoirs, by Ulysses S. Grant. One of the country’s worst presidents wrote what is certainly the greatest presidential memoir, one of the few books that really capture life in 19th-century America.
