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This is a thread that can be used to discuss the Pentagon - The U.S. Department of Defense.

Bentley, for our non-U.S. members, I assume we are talking about the U.S. Department of Defense and discussion of its unique building.

The Pentagon's New Map
by Thomas P.M. Barnett

Synopsis
Since the end of the Cold War, America's national security establishment has been searching for a new operating theory to explain how this seemingly "chaotic" world actually works. Gone is the clash of blocs, but replaced by what?

Thomas Barnett has the answers. A senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, he has given a constant stream of briefings over the past few years, and particularly since 9/11, to the highest of high-level civilian and military policymakers-and now he gives it to you. The Pentagon's New Map is a cutting-edge approach to globalization that combines security, economic, political, and cultural factors to do no less than predict and explain the nature of war and peace in the twenty-first century.

Building on the works of Friedman, Huntington, and Fukuyama, and then taking a leap beyond, Barnett crystallizes recent American military history and strategy, sets the parameters for where our forces will likely be headed in the future, outlines the unique role that America can and will play in establishing international stability-and provides much-needed hope at a crucial yet uncertain time in world history.

For anyone seeking to understand the Iraqs, Afghanistans, and Liberias of the present and future, the intimate new links between foreign policy and national security, and the operational realities of the world as it exists today, The Pentagon's New Map is a template, a Rosetta stone. Agree with it, disagree with it, argue with it-there is no book more essential for 2004 and beyond.

Council of War: A History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1942-1991

Steven L. Rearden

Synopsis

Council of War: A History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1942�1991 follows in the tradition of volumes previously prepared by the joint History Office dealing with JCS involvement in national policy, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Adopting a broader view than earlier volumes, it surveys the JCS role and contributions from the early days of World War II through the end of the Cold War. Written from a combination of primary and secondary sources, it is a fresh work of scholarship, looking at the problems of this era and their military implications. The main prism is that of the joint Chiefs of Staff, but in laying out the JCS perspective, it deals also with the wider impact of key decisions and the ensuing policies.

The narrative traces the role and influence of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from their creation in 1942 through the end of the Cold War in 1991. It is, first and foremost, a history of events and their impact on national policy. It is also a history of the Joint Chiefs of Staff themselves and their evolving organization, a reflection in many ways of the problems they faced and how they elected to address them. Over the years, the Joint History Office has produced and published numerous detailed monographs on JCS participation in national security policy. There has never been, however, a single-volume narrative summary of the JCS role. This book, written from a combination of primary and secondary sources, seeks to fill that void.

The Building: A Biography of the Pentagon

by David Alexander

Synopsis

It's one thing to write an appreciative history of the Pentagon that hews to the official viewpoint and rarely deviates from orthodoxy. It's another to write an account that pulls no punches and genuflects to nobody, that respects no authority higher than the absolute truth.

David Alexander has written such a book. He has practically singlehandedly ferreted out the ground truth that makes up both literal and figurative foundations of The Building. He has written the truth when the truth was noble, and he has also written the truth when it was less than noble. But he has always upheld the truth as his only guide.

David Alexander has also brought his keen and discriminating eye for lyrical prose to his account of the Pentagon, truly making this outstanding work of nonfiction "history as the novel, the novel as history."

Alexander has also departed from a standard chronological approach to narrative history. In tackling as large and ambitious a project as The Building, Alexander developed a writing plan that replaced an easy and often-used sequential storyline approach with a more complex narrative scheme that was designed to give far greater scope and depth to the narrative he envisioned for his book. It seemed the only approach worthy of a subject as large, as timely, as challenging and as supremely important as the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the global wars in which these icons of military power and global reach have played key and decisive strategic roles.

In telling the Pentagon's story Alexander abandoned the strict chronological storytelling format characteristic of other works and wove together a tapestry in prose that drew on disciplines ranging from the technicalities of the building construction trades, to the secrets of stealth warfare, to the intricacies of foreign policy, to the stratagems and behind-the-scenes gambits of international leadership, to the workings of the defense firms that together make up the global defense sector. Nor has he left out detailed coverage of the diverse personalities from Franklin Roosevelt to Robert Gates who envisioned, built and guided the actions and policies of the Pentagon from its origins to its present day operations, and who have launched it into the future.

Good add Jerome.

Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World
by Trevor Paglen

Synopsis
Welcome to a top-level clearance world that doesn't exist...Now with updated material for the paperback edition.

This is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a road trip through a shadow nation of state secrets, clandestine military bases, black sites, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies that make up what insiders call the "black world."

Here, geographer and provocateur Trevor Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out a covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar "black" budget, and interviews those who live on the edges of these blank spots.

Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, a secret prison in Kabul, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless-and delivers eye-opening details.

Thanks for all of the adds Alisa.

No wonder people get lost in this building!

SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense

by Charles A. Stevenson (no photo)

Synopsis:

SECDEF offers an expert's insights into one of the most difficult jobs in Washington. Of the twenty-one men who have held the post of secretary of defense since it was created in 1947, only half served more than eighteen months. The first, James Forrestal, committed suicide soon after leaving the Pentagon. Seven of his successors were fired or allowed to resign gracefully after losing the confidence of the president. Many left frustrated and disappointed, while few retained the celebrity and esteem they held while in office. One observer has called the job the graveyard of political ambitions. Charles A. Stevenson, who as a national security adviser to four U.S. senators has seen several defense secretaries in action, examines the unique challenges of this office to learn why the failure rate has been so high.

SECDEF focuses on how the secretary performs in the broader world of national security policymaking, how he handles civil-military relations in planning strategy and wars, how he functions on the National Security Council and deals with the president and secretary of state, and how well he performs as a politician, especially in dealing with Congress. In office, Charles Stevenson finds, these men have tended to fall into one of the three general roles for executing such responsibilities: revolutionaries, firefighters, or, the most common role, team players. Stevenson analyzes each type for its defining characteristics and evaluates individual secretaries. This book will appeal to defense professionals and students alike and to readers interested in American defense and foreign policy who want to learn more about the important role often played by the person informally labeled the SECDEF.

Inside the war room on the war on terrorism, resultant from 9/11.

War and Decision

by Douglas Feith(no photo)

Synopsis:

In the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, journalists, commentators, and others have published accounts of the Bush Administration's war on terrorism. But no senior Pentagon official has offered an inside view of those years, or has challenged the prevailing narrative of that war—until now.

Douglas J. Feith, the head of the Pentagon's Policy organization, was a key member of Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle as the Administration weighed how to protect the nation from another 9/11. In War and Decision, he puts readers in the room with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, General Tommy Franks, and other key players as the Administration devised its strategy and war plans. Drawing on thousands of previously undisclosed documents, notes, and other written sources, Feith details how the Administration launched a global effort to attack and disrupt terrorist networks; how it decided to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime; how it came to impose an occupation on Iraq even though it had avoided one in Afghanistan; how some officials postponed or impeded important early steps that could have averted major problems in Iraq's post-Saddam period; and how the Administration's errors in war-related communications undermined the nation's credibility and put U.S. war efforts at risk.

Even close followers of reporting on the Iraq war will be surprised at the new information Feith provides—presented here with balance and rigorous attention to detail. Among other revelations, War and Decision demonstrates that the most far-reaching warning of danger in Iraq was produced not by State or by the CIA, but by the Pentagon. It reveals the actual story behind the allegations that the Pentagon wanted to "anoint" Ahmad Chalabi as ruler of Iraq, and what really happened when the Pentagon challenged the CIA's work on the Iraq–al Qaida relationship. It offers the first accurate account of Iraq postwar planning—a topic widely misreported to date. And it presents surprising new portraits of Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Richard Armitage, L. Paul Bremer, and others—revealing how differences among them shaped U.S. policy.

With its blend of vivid narrative, frank analysis, and elegant writing, War and Decision is like no other book on the Iraq war. It will interest those who have been troubled by conflicting accounts of the planning of the war, frustrated by the lack of firsthand insight into the decision-making process, or skeptical of conventional wisdom about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the global war on terrorism—efforts the author continues to support.

Thanks all.

A little dated but still an interesting look at the inside battles in the Pentagon.

The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard

by James G. Burton(no photo)

Synopsis:

From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, a small band of military activists waged war against corruption in the Pentagon, challenging a system they believed squandered the public's money and trust. This book examines that movement and its proponents and describes how the system responded to their criticisms and efforts to change accepted practices and entrenched ways of thinking.

Yes, I wonder if there are any more current - a huge puzzling place.

I couldn't find anything but it does give us a look behind the scenes of the machinations that are constantly going on at the Pentagon.

Thanks

An upcoming book:
Release date: September 22, 2015

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

by Annie Jacobsen (no photo)

Synopsis:

No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain," from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.

This is the book on DARPA--a compelling narrative about this clandestine intersection of science and the American military and the often frightening results.

An upcoming book:
Release date: March 14, 2017

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World

by Sharon Weinberger (no photo)

Synopsis:

Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that have evolved from the agency's mission: forward-thinking solutions to the Pentagon's challenges. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA's successes and failures, useful innovations and wild-eyed schemes: we see how the nuclear threat sparked investment in computer networking, which led to the Internet, as well as plans to power a missile-seeking particle beam by draining the Great Lakes...how, in Vietnam, DARPA developed technology for the world's first armed drones and was also responsible for Agent Orange... how DARPA's recent success with self-driving cars is counterbalanced with its disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Weinberger has spoken to dozens of former DARPA and Pentagon officials--many of whom had never been interviewed before about their work with the agency--and synthesized countless documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The result is a riveting history of a meeting point of science, technology, and politics.

Blueprint for Action

by Thomas P.M. Barnett (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Pentagon's New Map was one of the most talked-about books of the year - a fundamental reexamination of war and peace in the post-9/11 world that provided a compelling vision of the future. Now, senior advisor and military analyst Thomas P.M. Barnett explores our possible long- and short-term relations with such nations and regions as Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East, China and North Korea, Latin America and Africa, while outlining the strategies to pursue, the entities to create, and the pitfalls to overcome. If his first book was "a compelling framework for confronting twenty-first century problems" (Business Week), Barnett's new book is something more - a powerful road map through a chaotic and uncertain world to "a future worth creating."