Molly & Other War Pieces by A.J. Liebling

A. J. Lieblings coverage of the Second World War for The New Yorker gives us a fresh and unexpected view of the warstories told in the words of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who fought it, the civilians who
endured it, and the correspondents who covered it.The hero of the title story is a private in the Ninth Army division known as Mollie, short for Molotov, so called by his fellow G.I.s because of his radical views and Russian origins. Mollie was famous for his outlandish dress (long blonde hair, riding boots, feathered beret, field glasses, and red cape), his disregard for army discipline, his knack for acquiring prized souvenirs, his tales of being a Broadway big shot, and his absolute fearlessness in battle.

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne

When Americans talk about the war in Iraq, they often draw parallels with the Vietnam War, but a better analogy is probably the French war against nationalist rebels in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. The landmark history of that conflict, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace, is an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers. Indeed, "Algeria" has become almost a codeword among U.S. counterinsurgency specialists -- a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the Iraq war. Like the Americans in Iraq, the French in Algeria consistently misunderstood the nature of the opposition, focusing too much on supposed foreign support and too little on the local roots of the insurgency.