A Few Additions

Any book about childbirth, nursing, pumping, sleep training, feeding, or anything else regarding the first 12 months of a human’s life.

When the Krulak Center first asked what titles I’d add to their list, I jokingly responded with a book on sleep training, which was by far my most impactful read in 2021. In fact, most of what I read this year fell squarely out of the NatSec/Defense category and squarely in this new mom category and therefore probably wouldn’t qualify for a list from a defense group — but the Krulak Center (or whoever is running their twitter) made a solid point, a good night’s sleep is crucial for decision makers, planners, policy makers, and operators.

But I’m including this grab bag of assorted books for another reason — not just the practical one for those with young children (you probably already know what I’m about to say), but for those without children or those with children well beyond the infant stage. These books aren’t just tactical manuals for new parents, together they are strategic playbooks that emphasize the criticality of the first year of life. They are the guidebooks in creating a strong foundation, not just for the individual child, but for the entire family.

The Marine Corps, of all the branches, should understand the essential need for a strong foundation — it’s why we emphasize the impact of boot camp and OCS. We know how initial training sets the base for the individual Marine and their entire unit.

Which is why the Marine Corps should be leading the fight on expanded paid parental leave. 14 days for the non-birthing parent? Please. Can you make a Marine in 14 days? Then you sure as hell can’t make a father/mother. The DoD is a funny place, where culturally everyone is encouraged to get married (like the time a supervisor told me I must be a “party girl” because I was single at 28), have a family (or the time when a peer told me I need to get married so I could be invited to their kids’ birthdays without making the wives uncomfortable). Marines are encouraged to do this so that they have “a support system” for the rigorous life the military demands. But support systems are only as strong as you build them.

I don’t know where the sweet spot for parental leave is, but until we start looking at that time as not a “perk” for parents, but as critical foundational time for a strong family, (read, strong Marine) we’ll never get there. So, I urge leaders, both those making the rules and those enforcing them, to remind themselves that the work, and energy that goes into the first year of life. Even more, on behalf of Marines who give birth, maybe a few of these books can hit home a few other important lessons — like how pumping is not a “break,” that extra postpartum body fat is there for a reason, and while men may be able to pull themselves over a bar 20+ times, a woman’s nipples can detect illness in another human and produce the appropriate antibodies to help them fight it — not to mention what the female body goes through building and birthing that human. So, it’s past time we stop ignoring the strength of the female body and or assuming the Marine Corps is the arbiter of strength and fitness (looking at you PFT).

168 Hours by Lisa VanderKamp

I re-read this time management book every few years and I recommend it to anyone who ever feels overworked, overwhelmed, or otherwise trapped in a schedule of someone else. The military is notorious for our “hurry up and wait,” environment, but isn’t that just another way to say inefficient at time management? We praise the Marine who is first in and last out, we wrongly assume the busiest person is also the most important, and we’re wrong. We can certainly do it better.

I first read this book before my last deployment — and it changed the way I looked at work and time. I had two big takeaways. First, we should reframe time in chunks of weeks, not days. Military life can be exhausting, there’s always another meeting, another project, another NJP. Our days get away from us. How many of us have said something along the lines of “there aren’t enough hours in the day?” 24 hours is too short a block of time to fit in everything. But expanding it to 168 hours — well we can work a little on all our projects (and priorities) in that time. The second takeaway is how we spend our time reflects our priorities, even the time we spend on things we don’t particularly enjoy. This book enabled me to slog through staff meetings because I valued my performance, my Marines, and my career, and those update meetings helped me achieve my goals in those areas — they weren’t wastes of time, they were valuable. On the other hand — some of those meetings absolutely were a waste of my time, and I had been going simply because I thought I was supposed to, because that’s what staff officers did. I’ll never forget the face of one my peers when I told him I was going to stop attending a weekly staff meeting (in which I never spoke, my boss was already attending, and I mostly daydreamed during). To him it was anarchy, in reality, it was freeing up an hour to actually work.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

As an intel professional, we’re taught the importance of communication, and this book is a master’s class in storytelling. It’s the kind of book so beautifully written and presented, that both the content and the structure, the flow, the poetry of it sticks with you for years. On the list for style alone, this book also reveals a deeper lesson for our NatSec community (particularly those of the Jacksonian tradition) — contrary to what we might like to believe, we are just as much a product of our environment and the systems within it as we are of our own decisions. Moreover, the choices of states have real effects on individuals, and not only should we care about these effects, but that the choices of individuals also have real, tangible effects on the state (looking at you Realists). This book brilliant sneaks these lessons in, intended or not, as well as micro lectures on international history, migration, and current cultural themes.

Think Again by Adam Grant

Again, highly encouraged for the intel community, but also impactful for the generalists in the room. Adam Grant is a favorite author of mine, and in this book, he tackles the importance of being wrong (which, um, is a feature of the national security community these days). Being wrong is where we learn and grow. Through studies, anecdotes, and straightforward logic, Grant gives us all practical advice on how to check our assumptions, even our deepest held beliefs to find a better truth. He gives us permission, even encouragement to admit we were wrong, in attempts to do better the next time.

I’ve written before about how the military, at all levels, prioritizing any action over the right action, and how that has led to massive strategic failures. Grant takes it to the next level, it’s not enough to think before we act, but we must also think again after. No more after-action reports or lessons learned files languishing on some lieutenant’s desktop or a corner in DC. Our reflections must look more like post-mortems in the medical field, or pilot debriefs in the ready room. Everyone must have a chance to speak freely and plainly, and real operation changes must be the output.

There we have it, my the non-traditional additions to any NatSec or defense reading list for 2021 — and special thanks to the Krulak Center for prompting me to put this together. If you’re looking for more obvious NatSec books, anything by Rosa Brooks or Anne-Marie Slaughter ranks high on my list, and for 2021 specific suggestions, I defer to the curated recommendations of The Interruptrr