The initial USMC (Africa) reading list included the following books:

Africa: A Biography of the Continent

Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire

Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution With a New Afterword on the Postwar Transiton

The River War an Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

African Counterterrorism Cooperation: Assessing Regional and Subregional Initiatives

Africa-US Relations: Strategic Encounters

Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa

Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide

Sudan: The Elusive Quest for Peace (International Peace Academy Occasional Paper)

New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance

The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives

Understanding Contemporary Africa (Understanding: Introductions to the States & Regions of the Contemporary World)

Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil

Counterterrorism in African Failed States: Challenges and Potential Solutions

Africa and the War on Terrorism

The United States in Africa: Bush Policy and Beyond (African Arguments)

Political Warfare in Sub-Saharan Africa: U.S. Capabilities and Chinese Operations in Etiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa

The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working

Africom's Dilemma: The "Global War on Terrorism," "Capacity Building," Humanitarianism, and the Future of U.S. Security Policy in Africa

The Macroeconomics of Scaling Up Aid: Lessons from Recent Experience (Occasional Paper)

East Africa And the Horn: Confronting the Challenges to Good Governance (International Peace Academy Occasional Paper)

The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence