Below you’ll find a selection of what I consider to be a slice of my best work. Mind you, there’s hundreds of essays to choose from, but these are the ones I remember with a smidgin of a smile. They fall in no particular order, and, yes, there’s a few more than ten…(I’m a writer, not a counter).
Book Project
The Art of the General: How Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower Won the Wars that Mattered the Most and their Enduring Lessons for Leadership, Power, and Supreme Command in the 21st Century (forthcoming 2021).
Book - Lead Editor and Author
- Winning Westeros: How Game of Thrones Explains Modern Military Conflict, eds. John Amble, Max Brooks, ML Cavanaugh, and Jaym Gates (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2019).
- Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict, eds. John Amble, Max Brooks, ML Cavanaugh, and Jaym Gates (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2018).
Refereed Online Publications
- “The Mike Flynn Problem is Actually a Profession of Arms Problem,” War On The Rocks (March 16, 2017).
- “A Straitjacket Strategy to Contain North Korea,” The National Interest (February 8, 2017).
- “To Study Modern War, There Is No Substitute for Going,” War On The Rocks (July 27, 2016).
- “The Soldier’s Question: Why Go Over There?,” War On The Rocks (July 15, 2016).
- “On the Eternal Importance of Demographics and Allies,” War On The Rocks (April 28, 2016).
- “A Netflix Assessment of China’s Rise and America’s Advantage,” War On The Rocks (April 20, 2016).
- “Soju Soldiers: KATUSAs, GIs, and the Search for the Bottom of the Bottle,” War On The Rocks (March 29, 2016).
- “The Way Home from ‘A War’,” War On The Rocks (February 11, 2016).
- “Sinking A Wrong Idea, Again,” War On The Rocks (October 5, 2015).
- “The Military’s Purpose is Not to Kill People and Break Things,” War On The Rocks (August 26, 2015).
- “The Painful Privilege: Why Deployed Soldiers Feel Like ‘The Walking Dead,’” War On The Rocks (July 30, 2015).
Major Daily Publications
- “My life was saved. I paid it forward,” Los Angeles Times (October 17, 2021).
- “The Canadian invasion that wasn’t: 100 years ago today, our neighbor to the north almost became our aggressor,” New York Daily News (April 12, 2021).
- “A crooked Christmas tree for a crooked year,” Los Angeles Times (December 22, 2020).
- “Retired military leaders shouldn’t endorse presidential candidates. America is divided enough,” Los Angeles Times (September 23, 2020).
- “On the grim arithmetic of war, Gallipoli cannot be dismissed as a colossal waste,” Sydney Morning Herald (April 25, 2020).
- “The Military Shouldn’t Shave Its Numbers,” Wall Street Journal (October 29, 2019).
- “How ‘Game of Thrones’ taught us the tragedy of war,” USA Today (September 24, 2019).
- “Be a politician or a soldier – not both,” Los Angeles Times (August 2, 2019).
- “The D-day photos that must be seen,” Los Angeles Times (June 2, 2019).
- “The Harlem Hellfighters show that diversity is America’s advantage in both war and peace,” Los Angeles Times (February 15, 2019). [Co-written with Max Brooks]
- “This year, 250,000 Americans won’t be home for Christmas,” Los Angeles Times (December 24, 2018).
- “Can science fiction help us prepare for 21st century warfare?” Los Angeles Times (May 28, 2018).
- “A Fallen and Forgotten Doughboy’s Legacy,” Wall Street Journal (May 25, 2018).
- “Don’t Be Evil, Support The Troops,” Wall Street Journal (April 16, 2018).
- “How the US ‘Goliath’ can win against its ‘David’ adversaries,” Los Angeles Times (January 30, 2018).
- “Wanted: A marathon for the masses, to help Americans lose weight,” New York Daily News (November 5, 2017).
- “Members of Congress serve in the military. They Shouldn’t.” Washington Post (June 2, 2017).
- “Their Chairs Are Empty, but We Know What Their Sacrifice Was For,” Wall Street Journal (May 26, 2017).
- “Why Officers Shouldn’t Vote,” New York Times (October 19, 2016). [Print title; Available online at nytimes.com as “I Fight for Your Right to Vote. But I Won’t Do It Myself”]
- “To fight Zika, deploy the National Guard,” Chicago Tribune (May 27, 2016). [Available at chicagotribune.com]
- “Ivy League should do more to promote ROTC,” USA Today (April 21, 2016). [Available at usatoday.com]
Read the Books
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