Nice list. I like it.

I appreciate Dan's selection of a couple of volumes here of history, or at least historyish material.

I wonder at the absence of 1) anything written by someone who has done foreign policy, as opposed to having merely observed it as an academic or journalist, and 2) anything that might provide some guidance as to how to succeed in this field. Success, after all, is not merely the absence of failure; it is not a natural state, nor is it something that is bound to come to really smart people as long as they avoid the mistakes of, say, the Defense Department under McNamara or Rumsfeld.

Moreover, if we're looking for something of potential use to people who may be called on to practice foreign policy rather than write the odd op-ed, blog post, or even book about the subject, we might do well to communicate something of the American foreign policy tradition in its finest periods. That's one reason I commend Acheson's memoir, or even Henry Kissinger's somewhat less accessible books.

Incidentally, there is one other reason, which someone who has never worked for a politician may not appreciate. Politicians like to read things they can quote. The best ones enjoy coming up with quotes on their own from time to time. Acheson and Kissinger are both mines for that kind of thing, and though audiences would need to be reminded who Acheson was, Kissinger is still a recognizable name. That's not really true of any of the authors on Dan's list -- doesn't mean their books are not worthwhile, or that they are dopes, but we want aspiring statesmen to read the books we give them.

I would add Graham Allison and Phillip Zelikow's Essence of Decision. Just an excellent, in-depth overview of the decision-making process from different angles.

I'd also add Yuen Foong Khong's Analogies at War, about the use of analogies in the Vietnam decision-making process. I confess to not having read Neustadt and May's book, despite being on my "to-do" list, and Khong's is probably more "technical," but I think it does a great job at thoroughly examining the way decision-makers use historical analogies and how that can have disastrous consequences. The study looks at three pertinent analogies - Munich, Korea, and Dien Bien Phu - and I couldn't help but think of the constant analogies to the USSR experience in the 1980s, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War that accompanied (or still do) the past decade's debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both of these are highly readable, and I think some of the more technical parts could be skipped without missing the core of the arguments.

"The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War," by Nicholas Thompson

"Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy,'' by Michael H. Hunt

"Planning A Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam," by Larry Berman (for Democrats) and "Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power," by Fred Kaplan (for Republicans)

To me Thoma Schelling's book Arms and Influence is seminal in understanding coercive diplomacy and such, and seems to describe pretty well how we've gotten to our current "world order" (although I get depressed whenever I read it, haha...). I'm still working through The Strategy of Conflict, seems more theoretical than Arms and Influence, so not sure if that's a good one to recommend to a "layman" senator, but I've always heard it's incredibly important.

Did anyone mention Barbara Tuchman's book, "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam: A meditation on the historical recurrence of governments pursuing policies evidently contrary to their own interests. Focuses on Troy, the Renaissance Popes provoking Protestantism, the British losing their American colonies, and the United States in Vietnam."? 1984
The title alone is worth it :)