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Tobias Clark selects his top five books on military leadership and command in war
Comparisons have long been drawn between officers in the military and leaders in business, and books promising to lift lessons from the battlefield into the boardroom are popular with civilians and soldiers alike. Between 2019 and 2022, four books examining leadership in war have been published. How do these rank alongside what I consider to be the classic of this genre?
Books crossing between the military and civilian spheres are usually didactic. Lieutenant Colonel Langley Sharp teaches how to lead like a soldier in Th DeHabit of Excellence: Why British Army Leadership Works (Penguin Business, 2021) and it is telling that it is published by the imprint Penguin Business. Andrew Roberts similarly writes of lessons to be learnt in Leadership in War: Lessons from Those Who Made History (first published Allen Lane, 2019. Penguin, 2020).
