One Bullet Away
A former captain in the Marines' First Recon Battalion, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, reveals how the Corps trains its elite and offers a point-blank account of twenty-first-century battle. Only one Marine in a hundred qualifies for Recon, charged with working clandestinely, often behind enemy lines. Fick's training begins with a hellish summer at Quantico, and advances to the pinnacle--Recon--four years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. Along the way, he learns to shoot a man a mile away, stays awake for seventy-two hours straight, endures interrogation and torture, learns to swim with Navy SEALs, and much more. His vast skill set puts him in front of the front lines. Fick unveils the process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between the military ideals he learned and military practice, which can mock those ideals.
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6recommend
6mentions
6people
2016–2021years
100% recommend
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What Hacker News says
- Off topic, but I was very surprised to learn how faithful the HBO series was to Wright’s book that I went one level deeper and read Nathaniel Fick’s book, “One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Fick’s description of events fit pretty well with Generation Kill. You don’t see that very often.
- Here's a reply[0] to a question that asked about directory structure.
Ignore the programming/technology part.
Military books (such as "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick or "Generation Kill" by Evan Wright which was turned into a mini-series on HBO). Field manuals can be interesting and you can learn a lot from them.
Knot books.
"Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War" by Robert Gates is interesting.
"The Art of Intelligence", by Henry Crumpton.
"Diplomacy" by Henry Kissinger is an interesting read. It starts with the balance of power in Europe, raison d'état, Richelieu, "U.S. exceptionalism". It is well written.
- If you enjoyed reading Wright's book, you may also enjoy Cpt. Nathaniel Fick's One Bullet Away. He led Second Platoon's Bravo Company.
- For those interested, here's the Marine Corps reading list. (Edit: that's actually already in the list of links you posted, missed it). There are a lot of good books on leadership; I'd stick to the Officer lists.
http://guides.grc.usmcu.edu/usmcreadinglist
It's not on the list, but the best book I've ever read was One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick; current CEO of Endgame Inc.
Turn the Ship Around! is also a great book about leadership and empowering your subordinates.
- One Bullet Away is great. It gives another perspective of the popular book Generation Kill.
- Check out any books / articles relating to the Marine Corps' "The Basic School" - It is where newly commissioned officers (and warrant officers) learn how to lead Marines.
My fav is: "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer" - by Nate Fick.
Long story short - The Basic School and training cadre are so effective at producing outstanding leaders, that MBA programs like Harvard and Wharton have built in a number of aspects of it to their "team building" courses / sequences: http://news.smeal.psu.edu/news-archive/2014/united-states-ma...
