The Military College of South Carolina

Leadership Reading List


Ariely, Dan. The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves. New York: Harper Perennial, 2013. Print. 

Blanchard, Ken, and Phil Hodges. The Servant Leader. Nashville: HarperCollins Publishing, 2003. Print. 

Brafam, Ori. and Rod A. Beckstrom. The Starfish and the Spider. London: The Penguin Group, 2006. Print. 

Brooks, David. The Road to Character. Random House Trade paperback edition. New York: Random House, 2016. Print. 

Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. Tom Doherty Associations, 1977. Print. 

Caslen, Robert The Character Edge: Leading and Winning with Integrity St. Martin’s Press; 2021. Print 

Catton, Bruce. Grant Takes Command Little, Brown & Co.; 1994. Print. 

Cohen, Eliot Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime. Anchor, 2003. 

Collins, Arthur S. Common Sense Training: A Working Philosophy for Leaders. Presidio Novato: Presidio Press, 2011. Print.  

Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t. London: Harper Business, 2001. Print.  

Covey, Stephen M.R. The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything. New York: Fress Press, 2006. Print.  

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Mango Media Inc., 2015. Print. 

Drucker, Peter F. “What Makes an Effective Executive.” Harvard business review 82.6 (2004): 58–136. Print. 

Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Simon and Schuster, 2016. Print. 

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Rev. and updated. New York: Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, 1985. Print. 

Frederick, Jim. Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death. Crown/Archetype, 2010. Print. 

Garlow, James L., Gerard. Reed, and John C. Maxwell. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Tested by Time : Those Who Followed Them– and Those Who Didn’t. Nashville, Tenn: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2002. Print. 

Gates, Robert Michael. A Passion for Leadership : Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service. First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. Print. 

Gerras, Stephen J. and Leonard Wong. “Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession”. Strategic Studies Institute. United States Army War College Press. 2015. 

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink : the Power of Thinking Without Thinking. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2005. Print. 

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers : the Story of Success. First Back Bay paperback edition. New York, New York: Back Bay Books, 2011. Print. 

Goleman, Daniel, Primal Leadership, Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Harvard Business Review Press, 2013. Print 

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Simon and Schuster, 2006. Print. 

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print. 

Kerr, James Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About The Business of Life. Constable, United Kingdom. 2013. Print 

Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), and Allan Nevins. Profiles in Courage. [Inaugural ed.]. New York: Harper, 1961. Print. 

Kotter, John P. Leading Change. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012. Print. 

Kouzes, James M., and Barry Z. Posner. Credibility How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011. Print. 

Kouzes, James M., and Barry Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge Workbook. John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Print. 

Marquet, L. David. Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders. Penguin, 2013. Print. 

Maxwell, John C. Good Leaders Ask Great Questions: Your Foundation for Successful Leadership. Center Street, 2014. Print. 

McChrystal, Stanley A. et al. Team of Teams : New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. New York, New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2015. Print. 

Myrer, Anton. Once an Eagle. Harper Collins, 2013. Print. 

Pressfield, Steven. Gates of Fire : an Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. Bantam trade pbk. ed. New York, N.Y: Bantam Books, 2005. Print. 

Pressfield, Steven. The Warrior Ethos. Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2011. Print. 

Robertson, Donald How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. St. Martin’s Press, 2019. Print. 

Shapira, Allison. Speak with Impact, How to Command the Room and Influence Others. Harper Collins Leadership, 2018. Print 

Sinek, Simon. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Penguin, 2011. Print. 

Sinek, Simon. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. Penguin, 2014. Print. 

Stavridis, James. The Leader’s Bookshelf, Naval Institute Press, 2017. Print. 

Stavridis, James Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character, Naval Institute Press, 2020. Print. 

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan : the Impact of the Highly Improbable. 2nd ed., Random trade pbk. ed. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2010. Print. 

Zinni, Tony. Leading the Charge: Leadership Lessons from the Battlefield to the Boardroom. St. Martin’s Press; 2009. Print.