Three reading lists for those interested in a career as a mercenary.
List #1:
- Something About a Soldier, Willeford
- Legionnaire: My Five Years in the French Foreign Legion, Murray
- The Courage of the Early Morning, Bishop
- The Memoirs of George Sherston, Sassoon
- Soldier Against the Odds, Large
- Soldier, Herbert
- Tom Burke of Ours, Lever (also, “Our Mess” and “Charles O’Malley”)
- Imperial Grunts, Kaplan
- My Detachment, Kidder
- The Originals, Baker
- Chosen Soldier, Couch
- Masters of Chaos, Robinson
List #2:
- The Iliad, Homer/Chapman (and/or Pope, Fagles)
- War and the Iliad, Weil, Bespaloff, Benfey, McCarthy
- Henry V, Shakespeare
- The Anabasis, Xenophon/Brownson (or The Long March, Fox)
- Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age, Waterfield
- A Greek Army on the March: Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon's Anabasis, Lee
- The Aeneid, Virgil/Dryden (or Fagles)
- God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, Tyerman
- Orlando Furioso (Parts one and two), Ariosto/Reynolds (or Harrington)
- Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso/Esolen (or Fairfax)
- Amadis of Gaul, Montalvo/Behm & Place
- Epics of the Middle Ages, Barber (ed.), Lord (illus.)
- The Lays of Ancient Rome, Macaulay
- The Boys Froissart, Lanier
- The Boys King Arthur, Lanier
- The Discourses, Machiavelli/Mansfield/Tarcov
- The History of Rome, Livy/Foster
- The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization, Ward-Perkins
- The Eagle of the Ninth, Sutcliff
- Honor: A History, Bowman
- After Virtue, 2nd edition, MacIntyre
List #3:
- Company Commander, MacDonald
- Crossing the Line, Kernan
- Erik England: The Phantom of Phu Bai, Turner
- Finding The Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy, Kagan
- Heroes of the SAS, Davies
- John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy , Cafero
- Midway, Kernan
- Moving Mountains, Pagonis
- Old Man’s War, Scalzi
- One of the Originals, Cooper
- Platoon Leader, McDonough
- Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker
- Sgt. York, Perry
- Shadow Warriors, Clancy and Steiner
- Soldiers of the Old Army, Vogel
- Starship Trooper, Heinlein
- The Commandos, Waller
- The Company They Keep, Simmons
- The Enormous Room, Cummings
- The Face of Battle, Keegan
- The Forever War, Haldeman (Avon 1991 Mass Market paperback edition only)
- The Jungle is Neutral, Chapman
- The Last Valley, Windrow
- The Lost Moon, Lovell
- The Real Bravo Two Zero, Asher
- The Regulars, Coffman
- The Right Stuff, Wolfe
- The Thin Red Line, Jones
- The Warrior Elite, Couch and Hollenbeck
- The Warriors, Gray
- To Hell and Back, Murphy
- Victoria’s Wars, David
- War Made New, Boot
- Warrior Politics, Kaplan
- Warriors, Hastings
- With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, Sledge
- Yeager: An Autobiography, Yeager
