Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life, by Patrick Van Horne.
I finished reading this book last week and I took some time to digest all the material. It is filled with invaluable lessons from the Marine Corps Combat Hunter Program, presenting several strategic ways or systems for making decisions under pressure and on less than permissive environments. Left of Bang will enhance the level of observation and awareness of your surroundings. It is an excellent text about decision making in any time-critical profession where safety and lives are on the line.
Learning how to read the environment and respond to it properly is sometimes the difference between coming out alive or not. The book does a great job about explaining baseline body language, atmospherics and what is normal or not, in other words, detection of anomalies. You begin to understand the importance of trying to think proactively, 2-3 steps ahead of a possible threat.
The material in the book is taken from the US Marine Corps Combat Hunter Program, which was implemented as a way to better prepare Marines for counterinsurgency environments just as those found in Iraq and Afghanistan. In these environments the enemy hides among the civilians and blends in, coming out to attack and returning to being a "civilian". THe book touches some of the best profiling methods, some used by Israel, a country with a history of situational awareness. These are methods that anyone can apply to their daily lives and ennhace personal security.
Highly recommended.