It's all very nice wondering who moved your cheese or what color your parachute might be, but the latest genre of business advice book, in a nation at war, skips the cute metaphors.

"Rangers expect success, but expect to haul a heavy load on the way, and once there, violently destroy the enemy," advises No Excuse Leadership: Lessons from the U.S. Army's Elite Rangers. "Your enemy may be a nay-saying boss, complacent support department, or competitors. I don't know your situation, but I do know that if you show up with a knife in a gunfight, you lose. You want to show up to a gunfight with a tank and four friends."

The current U.S. military invasion isn't overseas. It's in books aimed at business managers. Pick any branch of the armed services - even elite forces - and there's likely a book out now adapting its practices to the civilian workplace.

The Elite Rangers book, by former Ranger Brace Barber, came out this month. Next month, Donald Wiley & Sons publishes Be*Know*Do: Leadership the Army Way, adapted from the Army's internal leadership manual. McGraw-Hill will reprint the Army manual itself.

Later this year, McGraw-Hill releases Becoming a Leader the Annapolis Way, by a retired Navy captain. Just after last Christmas came Business as War, by Ken Allard, former Dean of the National War College, and The Marine Corps Way: Using Maneuver Warfare to Lead a Winning Organization, written by two ex-Marines and their professor from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Eric K. Clemons.

And there's a battalion of others, including Leadership Lessons of the Navy SEALs, It's Your Ship: Management Techniques From the Best Damn Ship in the Navy, and Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way.

Managers can even get tips from a war loser in The Genius of Robert E. Lee: Leadership Lessons for the Outgunned, Outnumbered, and Underfinanced.

Four years ago, business publishers scrambled to issue books on Internet and stock-market strategies or respected corporate leaders.

But "given everything going on in the last three years, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the icons are not on Wall Street anymore," said Philip Ruppel, a vice president at McGraw-Hill, which besides Navy SEALs and Marine Corps Way also has published The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell and The Rumsfeld Way.

"Had we not had everything going on in our world post-9/11, would Navy SEALs or The Rumsfeld Way have sold as well? Would we have published it? Probably not," Ruppel said.

None of the new military books has stormed best-seller charts, but publishers say they have been consistent sellers, and there is always the chance of a blockbuster.

"Publishing blockbusters is like doing hits in the movies. Everybody wants to, but it's not that easy," Ruppel said. "We respond very aggressively to trends."

It's Your Ship has sold 140,000 copies since its 2002 release and continues to sell about 6,000 weekly, topping publisher Warner Books' expectations. The Marine Corps Way, out only since late December, is already entering a second printing.

The Colin Powell leadership book, written without Powell's participation, has sold about 150,000 copies since its 2002 release, McGraw-Hill says. By comparison, that is far short of Powell's 1995 autobiography, which quickly topped a million copies sold. Who Moved My Cheese?, a book about dealing with organizational change, has more than 14 million copies in print.

Though the military-industrial books are generous with battle stories and jargon, they do not hammer on using force to get things done.

"The fundamental idea of maneuver warfare is that any time you can use flexibility, resilience and subtlety, in place of a brute-force war of attrition, you're better off," said Wharton's Clemons, who cowrote The Marine Corps Way. "Why do a head-to-head price war if you can find your competitor's strategic vulnerability, or the marketplace opportunity, and exploit that. Why fight your competition? Why not just win?"

And the books do not suggest better management comes through tighter authority and drill-sergeant bullying. Rather, they convey the military's traditional strengths: planning missions, anticipating responses, defining success, leading by example, instilling honor, creating group purpose, and valuing team members.

"The military has a well-deserved reputation for being a top-down, command-and-control organization," said Navy Capt. D. Michael Abrashoff, who wrote It's Your Ship. But, he said, barking orders is not how he led his missile destroyer, the USS Benfold, to get more done with fewer resources and a reduced crew.

"One of my officers said what made us successful was that we recruited our people each and every day, even though we already had them on board," he said.

Clemons said that might be the main idea businesses can borrow from the military.

"We have treated employees so poorly," he said. "At the same time, you can be considered suspect as a Marine officer for something as simple as putting a rotten piece of fruit back on a breakfast table. The idea is that if you expect your men to die for you, but you think rotten fruit is good enough for them, you are not a Marine Corps officer."