but …

Maybe someday — recommend them anyway:

1.  Pat Lang’s Devereux novels, The Butcher’s Cleaver, followed by Death Piled Hard. Confederate secret agents in DC and Richmond.  Pat is a career intel pro — ran DoD’s human intelligence operations for a while — and he also turned out to be a great story teller.

2.  The Rules of Victory, by James Gimian and Barry Boyce.  An in-depth look at the foundations of the strategic thread that led to Boyd.  Essential reading if you want to understand where Boyd is going.  This is deep stuff, and I recommend it only to people who have a strong working knowledge of the Sun Tzu text and have at least skimmed the Demna translation, upon which this book is based.

3.  The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad.  The grandfather of spy novels and still one of the best.  Like Colombian coffee — rich, satisfying, and meant to be savored.

4.  Counterclockwise, by Ellen Langer. Professor Langer, of the Psychology Dept. at Harvard, describes research she and her colleagues have done on what she calls “mindfulness” and what Boyd called “orientation.”