THE MIND OF WAR; JOHN BOYD AND AMERICAN SECURITY
Grant T. Hammond
2001

From the Preface: “Boyd is known to a relatively small coterie of people.  His name is hardly a household word.  He attained success in his career on a number of issues, in a number of fields.  He was a major contributor on air-air tactics, and aircraft designer, a military strategist, a bureaucratic in-fighter, a defense reformer, and a fighter pilot of great renown.  This book…is an exercise in synthesis, to understand the man, his ideas, and their importance.  It is an attempt to combine the bits and pieces of the fighter pilot and intellectual, the aircraft designer and strategist, the maneuver warfare tactician and scientist.... >>More

BOYD; THE FIGHTER PILOT WHO CHANGED THE ART OF WAR
Robert Coram
2002

From Chapter Thirty One – The Ghetto Colonel and the SecDef: “It is through a body of writing that a man such as Boyd is remembered.  It is when academics pore over a man’s words and then write learned papers that his ideas find permanency. And that may be why Boyd was so enthusiastic about the book being researched by Grant Hammond…In the beginning, Hammond saw the book as a biography.  But that changed when Boyd issued his only caveat: no personal information is to be included in the book.  Boyd did not want to talk about…his family, or about personal dimensions...>>More

CERTAIN TO WIN; The Strategy of John Boyd Applied to Business
Chet Richards
2004

From Robert Coram’s BOYD: "During his later years, Boyd’s two great professional delights were the work of Chet Richards and a book (The Mind of War) being researched by Dr. Grant Hammond at the Air War College… Richards and Boyd talked for years about applying Boyd’s ideas to business…Boyd encouraged him …to develop his ideas…He saw this as an affirmation of the fact that his intellectual legacy encompassed more than warfighting; his ideas were universal. Timeless, and could be applied to any form of conflict.” >>More

Beginning with his first study in 1985 on how fire-fighters make life-and-death decisions under extreme time pressure, Dr. Klein’s book, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, is about human strengths and capabilities applied, not about computer decision aids.  He proposes that the sources of power needed in natural settings are not analytical at all but rather power of intuition, mental stimulation, metaphor, and storytelling.  He then presents a decision strategy of skill...>>More

Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale, author of Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, as senior naval officer in the Prisoner of War Camps in North Vietnam from 9 September 1965 until 12 February, 1973 was awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership particularly in regard to establishing communication processes for prisoner support life lines and setting criteria for prisoner resistance to interrogation, and propaganda exploitation.  In the opening essay, Admiral Stockdale states “People were trying to use us and have us tear each other apart in the process…>>More