RAND Best Sellers for 2009
The books listed below are RAND's top-ten, best sellers for 2009. You can find these and other RAND publications in bookstores; they can also be ordered through RAND. Also see RAND Book Reviews.
1.
Thinking About America's Defense: An Analytical Memoir
Over his 33 years in the Air Force and more than 20 years at RAND, Lt Gen Glenn A. Kent was a uniquely acute analyst and developer of American defense policy. In this volume, he offers not so much a memoir in the normal sense as a summary of the dozens of national security issues in which he was personally engaged during his long career. In the process, he describes the related analytical frameworks and illustrates the bureaucratic intricacies.
2.
Revitalizing Arts Education Through Community-Wide Coordination
Initiatives to coordinate schools, cultural institutions, community-based organizations, foundations, and/or government agencies to promote access to arts education in and outside of schools have recently developed. This study looks at the collaboration efforts of six urban communities: how they started and evolved, the kinds of organizations involved, conditions that helped and that hindered coordination, and strategies used.
3.
Invisible Wounds of War: Summary and Recommendations for Addressing Psychological and Cognitive Injuries
Summarizes key findings and recommendations from Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery (Tanielian and Jaycox [Eds.], MG-720-CCF, 2008), a comprehensive study of the post-deployment health-related needs associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and traumatic brain injury among veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom/Iraqi Freedom.
4.
Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan: RAND Counterinsurgency Study -- Volume 4
This study explores the nature of the insurgency in Afghanistan, the key challenges and successes of the campaign, and the capabilities necessary to wage effective counterinsurgency operations. It argues that successful counterinsurgency requires effective indigenous security forces, especially police; a viable and legitimate local government; and the suppression of external support for insurgents.
5.
NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment
This book offers a thorough appraisal of Operation Allied Force, NATO's 78-day air war to compel the president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, to end his campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
6.
The Reform of Qatar University
In 2003, the State of Qatar engaged the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute to assist Qatar University with reform of its major administrative and academic structures, policies, and practices. In this summary of the reform effort, the authors recount the motivation for reform, describe the design of the reform agenda, and detail the early stages of the implementation effort, with an eye toward identifying challenges yet to be met.
7.
Air Power Against Terror: America's Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 plunged the United States into a determined counteroffensive against Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network. This report details the initial U.S. military response to those attacks, namely, the destruction of al Qaeda’s terrorist infrastructure and the removal of the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The author emphasizes several distinctive achievements in this war, including the use of precision air-delivered weapons that were effective irrespective of weather, the first combat use of Predator unmanned aerial vehicles armed with Hellfire missiles, and the integrated employment of high-altitude drones and other air- and space-based sensors that gave CENTCOM unprecedented round-the-clock awareness of enemy activity.
8.
Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958
When Algerian nationalists launched a rebellion against French rule in November 1954, France was forced to cope with a varied and adaptable Algerian strategy. In this volume, originally published in 1963, David Galula reconstructs the story of his highly successful command at the height of the rebellion. This groundbreaking work, with a new foreword by Bruce Hoffman, remains relevant to present-day counterinsurgency operations.
9.



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