An excerpt of ADM Jim Stavridis’ must-read book: “The Admiral’s Bookshelf”

In the process of putting together my summer reading recommendations, I realized there is a truly must-read book that hasn’t appeared on any of my prior lists: retired Admiral Jim Stavridis’ new volume, The Admiral’s Bookshelf.

I’ve always been a fan of ADM Stavridis’ writings (we were classmates at the National War College and he is, literally, the smartest person I’ve ever met in the service), but this one is very special.  It speaks to a carefully curated list of twenty-five books he selected (from his personal library of 5,000 volumes!) that particularly impacted his leadership development.  Given that his career culminated in his highly successful tour of duty as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, his observations about leadership are quite obviously extraordinarily valuable.

Though ADM Stavridis would no doubt be pleased if his audience read all twenty-five books for themselves, he nevertheless seems to appreciate that it is unlikely to happen.  Consequently, he offers enough of a summary of his picks so that the reader has a context for the wisdom each conveys.  To be so expertly exposed to the essence of over two dozen classics would, alone, make reading The Admiral’s Bookshelf a wise investment, but the author gives us much more than that.

ADM Stavridis distills one (and, often, more than one) lesson from each of his selections.  In discussing it, he gives the readers vignettes from his own career (including some that are not-so-flattering) that illustrate the value of the principle(s) a particular book relates.  His candor about his own experiences gives the book tremendous teaching power.

It would be a mistake, however,  to think the book is aimed exclusively at those in the military.  Actually, what it teaches is pertinent to a leader in any environment and, more than that, to anyone wanting life lessons.

One more note: the book concludes with a very helpful chapter on how to assemble your own “bookshelf” of readings.

With permission of the U.S. Naval Institute Press, an excerpt of the book – its “Introduction” – is found below.   I wanted you to have this because not only does it introduce you to the book, it also explains why reading is so valuable, especially for young people.  The book is beautifully and cogently written – I’m certain you’ll learn a lot from this slim (only 209 pages!) volume.  Seriously, I can’t imagine a better intellectual investment for your summer reading than The Admiral’s Bookshelf!

Here’s the excerpt:

Introduction

I have always loved books. Wherever I have been in the world—on the bridge of a rolling ship during the long sea-going years of my Navy career, in the quiet dean’s office of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston, in my current office at the Carlyle Group in Washington, in the chairman’s office of the Rockefeller Foundation, or at home in Florida—I always have a stack of books at hand. I can’t wait to finish the one I am reading to get on to the next.

Partly this is because of how I spent my early years. My father, a career U.S. Marine Corps officer, was assigned in Athens, Greece, in the 1960s, and so it was there I lived as a young boy. There was no English-language television available in the three years we were there, so books became my escape. Both my parents, especially my mother, were inveterate readers who ensured I never developed the television habit; even today I seldom turn on anything but news programming.

I love books most because they help me learn, allow me to live a thousand different lives, and challenge me to make the best decisions. Let me explain …

First and most important, for me, books have always been the easiest and best way to learn. I am a deeply curious person, and long, long before the appearance of the Internet I loved to sit in a library with thousands of books surrounding me, searching for answers to questions big and small. Today, that kind of curiosity can be satisfied with a few flicks of the fingers on a smart phone; but we should remember that all the knowledge of the world has been stacked up, century by century, in book after book after book. The facts that drive the world come to us through literature. I learn best and most efficiently by reading.

Books are also for me the best means of transporting myself to an entirely different world, a different life, and a different set of challenges and rewards. A reader opening the pages of Sharpe’s Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwall is instantly back in 1805 on the fiery deck of His Majesty’s Ship Victory watching the Battle of Trafalgar unfold, seeing Vice Admiral Lord Nelson shot down by a French sniper, watching him carried to the cockpit to die in the moment of his greatest triumph. By opening Henry Kissinger’s memoirs, another reader can stand alongside the secretary of state as he is pitching President Richard Nixon on the decision to open China. And either reader can this very afternoon go to sea in a tiny skiff with Cuban fisherman Santiago and learn that a man can be destroyed but not defeated when they pick up The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

Finally, I believe every book I open is a simulator. By reading of the situations facing protagonists, both in fact and in fiction, I can ask myself that vital question: what would I do? So often, in the biggest decisions of our lives, the right answer is not crystal dear. By placing ourselves in the protagonist’s mind we can effectively practice making those difficult choices. In The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Don Vito Corleone says to his headstrong son, Santino, that we should not make the mistake of hating our enemies, because hatred clouds our judgment. Is that always true? Can we not hold a righteous hatred for an implacable enemy-Hitler or the Islamic State, for example–without clouding our judgment?

Only by diving into literature can you put yourself in those simulated moments and mentally explore how to make the right decisions for yourself.

On and on, we can voyage on the great sea of fact and fiction, of reliable and unreliable narrators, of historical novels and voluminous biographies, afloat on the endless ocean of truly good books. And as we do, we learn about the vast and endless world; we escape and are entertained by the infinite variety of times, places, and people we encounter; and we practice and hone our own skills as strategists, decision makers, and judges of the human condition.

All this for the price of a library card-which is generally free, and these days usually has online options.

Sounds too good to be true, right? But the catch, the hard part, is deceptively simple: picking out the good books and deciding what to read. In that regard, my advice is to cast a wide net and “read fast to read slow.”

As to casting a wide net, I mean learning as much about the books available to you as you can. There are thousands of volumes published each year, vastly more than any reader can conquer, and so reviews—short, readable summaries and judgments about newly published books—are the first way to narrow your list. Immensely helpful, and a primary source of recommendations, are the reviews that appear in leading newspapers and journals. If you are a specialized reader, say in maritime affairs, as I am, you will want to peruse the journals that specialize in your area of interest; for example, the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings for all things dealing with the oceans. But regardless of your specialization, you should also be scanning the wider-scope journals like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal for their weekly literary reviews.

Discussing books with friends who are readers can be a huge help. Local book dub organizers are always diehard readers, and every good reader has a circle of friends for recommendations. One fellow four-star admiral, Harry Harris, collects signed first editions and has given me dozens of first-rate recommendations over the long years of our friendship. Similarly, good friend former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig, for whom I worked over the course of two eventful years in the Pentagon, is a wonderful source of book ideas. Barbara Immergut, a former editor, is a close friend and book recommender. I hear about books from neighbors, colleagues at work, and people I meet at dinner par­ ties—and I always ask, “What are you reading?”

The proprietors of independent bookstores—which often highlight recommendations from their staff members—are a terrific source of book ideas. Some of the best recommendations I’ve received over the years have come from the small but mighty local indie The BookMark in Neptune Beach, Florida. When I’m in New York City, I always visit the vast Strand bookstore in Manhattan and see what their team is recommending. Ditto in south Florida at Raptis Rare Books.

Finally, the wide net you cast should include online lists of good books, and here the sources are almost infinite. You can find what celebrities and former presidents and captains of industry and entertainers are reading. Just as easily, you can look at the recommended reading lists of leaders of many huge business organizations or the military services or university leaders. Simply plugging “book recommendations” into a browser will generate literally millions of ideas and lists—I did it on Google moments ago and had 100 million hits.

The second idea worth exploring is “reading fast to read slow.” What I mean by this is that to cover the most ground in reading, you need to expose yourself to lots and lots of books—skimming them, beginning them, and then being willing to discard them if they are not interesting or do not meet your needs.

There are simply too many books to do otherwise. Voltaire said the tragedy of reading was that you could begin in the first alcove of the French national library, read steadily, and die before completing even that relatively small section. So many books, so little time. Thus, I advocate picking up hundreds of books, skimming them quickly, and then identifying the handful that are meaningful, indeed crucial, to your own voyage in life.

That’s when you read slow; you read carefully, taking notes to preserve what you learn. The best way to “read fast to read slow” is to use libraries (especially online) to access numerous books. Check out a big pile, work through them quickly, and pick out the few that are worth reading closely. Keeping a reader’s journal is helpful—jotting down the many titles you encounter but writing seriously only about the handful of volumes that taught you something important. Your notes will help you remember what you have learned.

All of which brings us to Why this list? Why am I suggesting the books in The Admiral’s Bookshelf? What I hope makes this slim offering of twenty-five books both unique and interesting is that they represent the nexus of reading and leading.

I’ve already done a couple of previous books along these lines (The Leader’s Bookshelf and The Sailor’s Bookshelf), but those were longer compilations of fifty books each, and each had a different purpose. The Leader’s Bookshelf was compiled by synthesizing the book choices of dozens of very senior military officers. The book choices were not tied to actual principles of leadership but instead were books that inspired those leaders to be better people.

The Sailor’s Bookshelf is very focused on the maritime world and was intended to help readers better understand the sea. While I stand by the value of the hundred or so books in those two volumes, neither focuses specifically on “how to lead,” as this new volume does.

What I’ve set out to do in The Admiral’s Bookshelf is to tie together very specific life lessons and principles of leadership that have stood me in great stead over the years with specific books that illustrate those principles for me. I’ve chosen twenty-five principles of life and leadership that have been fundamental for me as a military officer, a teacher and dean of a graduate school, an international business leader, and chairman of a large global philanthropic foundation. While the challenges and circumstances of each of those portions of my life and career were very different, the basic principles of life and leadership aligned quite well across the different environments. These twenty-five direct and simple ideas are almost always easy to say but hard to execute. The books I cite in this work are the keys to understanding and executing those principles.

This is not, by the way, a sappy, cheerleader-style self-help book. The books I’ve selected reflect both positive and negative experiences that have shaped my life. Some of them, such as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Old Man and the Sea, are relatively dark. And while the list is not directly informed by my life on the oceans, my experiences at sea are part of this voyage.

As an example, a book I come back to again and again for its simple, direct, and meaningful leadership and life lessons is Colin Powell’s It Worked for Me, essentially a collection of anecdotes and advice. In The Admiral’s Bookshelf I’ve tied that book to something very specific that defined General Powell in one important way: his willingness to be his own spokesman. When the United States liberated Kuwait by attacking Iraq in the first Gulf War, General Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, took the podium himself to brief the American public. Indeed, throughout his storied career—Army general, national security advisor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and ultimately secretary of state, Colin Powell personally briefed the public, the Department of Defense and the rest of the U.S. government, and the world.

This set of connections—of life and leadership principles with selected books—creates a unique approach to reading and leading. It illustrates my own belief that the best leaders are also readers, because they have broadened their horizons through exposure to thousands of books, practiced their craft in the simulators of published volumes, and expanded their knowledge much further than simple experience alone can provide, no matter how extraordinary their life and journey.

Would you like more?  A longer preview is found here, and a very, very interesting podcast with Admiral Stavridis discussing the book is found here. 

Seriously, if you are only going to read one book this summer (and, remember, this one weighs in at just 209 pages!), make The Admiral’s Bookshelf your pick!

Still, remember what we like to say on Lawfire^®: read the book, gather the facts, evaluate the ideas – and then decide for yourself!