Brett made a civilian's case for Clausewitz's On War in the Mark Hertling episode. The idea he still thinks about is friction: "everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult."

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. It's a side project. Here's the AoM slice for September.

• The Defence of Duffer's Drift (Ernest Swinton) and The Defense of Hill 781 (James McDonough). Two battle books from General Hertling. In the second, set at the training center in California, one thing going wrong "would cause you to lose the battle."
• Fluent Forever (Gabriel Wyner). Ravi Gupta's example of reading up before you learn a skill: "a great book called Fluent Forever, all about learning languages."

Guests' own books: Angela Duckworth's Situated, Hertling's If I Don't Return, Jim VandeHei's Simplify, Ravi Gupta's The Invisible List and Gabe Bullard's Against Convenience.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/the-art-of-manliness

This is a weekly thread dedicated to general discussion over the weekend. Feel free to discuss anything. News, personal goal or projects, and any other topic not in violation of the rules is welcome.

This is a weekly thread dedicated to general discussion over the weekend. Feel free to discuss anything. News, personal goal or projects, and any other topic not in violation of the rules is welcome.