Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

by Jim Mattis, Bing West

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A clear-eyed account of learning how to lead in a chaotic world, by General Jim Mattis--the former Secretary of Defense and one of the most formidable strategic thinkers of our time--and Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine.

"A four-star general's five-star memoir."--The Wall Street Journal

Call Sign Chaos is the account of Jim Mattis's storied career, from wide-ranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding a quarter of a million troops across the Middle East. Along the way, Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas--and short-sighted thinking--now facing our nation. He makes it clear why America must return to a strategic footing so as not to continue winning battles but fighting inconclusive wars.

Mattis divides his book into three parts: Direct Leadership, Executive Leadership, and Strategic Leadership. In the first part, Mattis recalls his early experiences leading Marines into battle, when he knew his troops as well as his own brothers. In the second part, he explores what it means to command thousands of troops and how to adapt your leadership style to ensure your intent is understood by your most junior troops so that they can own their mission. In the third part, Mattis describes the challenges and techniques of leadership at the strategic level, where military leaders reconcile war's grim realities with political leaders' human aspirations, where complexity reigns and the consequences of imprudence are severe, even catastrophic.

Call Sign Chaos is a memoir of a life of warfighting and lifelong learning, following along as Mattis rises from Marine recruit to four-star general. It is a journey about learning to lead and a story about how he, through constant study and action, developed a unique leadership philosophy, one relevant to us all.

Genres: Leadership, Military Fiction, Biography, Nonfiction, History, Memoir, War

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

James Norman Mattis (born September 8, 1950) is an American veteran and former government official who served as the 26th United States Secretary of Defense from January 2017 through December 2018. A retired United States Marine Corps general, Mattis served in the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.

Reviews

[Laura Noggle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dry at times, but the second half makes up for it.

Also — Mattis's hardline stance on the importance of reading was completely fantastic and I am obsessed with his related quotes:

“If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.”

“By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men. Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.”

He also delivers an awesome blow to PowerPoint:

“PowerPoint is the scourge of critical thinking. It encourages fragmented logic by the briefer and passivity in the listener. Only a verbal narrative that logically connects a succinct problem statement using rational thinking can develop sound solutions. PowerPoint is excellent when displaying data; but it makes us stupid when applied to critical thinking.”

Prior to this book, I didn't know that much about Mattis. He comes across as a dedicated, honorable patriot and it's impossible not to have respect for him. There is no dishing or dirt, and he flat out states that he takes great pride in the fact that no one knows who he votes for — he supported every commander-in-chief he served under equally.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

Some of Mattis's favorite books from the bibliography (for later reference):

Max Boot, "Invisible Armies" & "The Savage Wars of Peace"
Robert Coram, "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War"
Martin Van Crevald, "Fighting Power"
Nate Fick, "One Bullet Away"
Gen U.S. Grant, "Personal Memoirs"
Colin Gray, "Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy"
Liddell-Hart, "Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American" & "Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon"
M.M. Kaye, "The Far Pavilions"
H.R. McMaster, "Dereliction of Duty"
Williamson Murray, "Military Innovation in the Interwar Period" & "Successful Strategies"
Anton Myrer, "Once An Eagle"
Hew Strachan, "The Direction of War"
Colin Powell, "My American Journey"
Steven Pressfield, "Gates of Fire"
Guy Sajer, "The Forgotten Soldier"
Michael Shaara, "Killer Angels"
George P. Shultz, "Turmoil and Triumph" & "Issues On My Mind"
Viscount Slim, "Defeat Into Victory"
Nicholas Monsarrat, "The Cruel Sea"
Robert Gates, "Duty"
C.E. Lucas Phillips, "The Greatest Raid of All"
Will & Ariel Durrant, "The Lessons of History"
Alistair Horne, "A Savage War of Peace"
Betty Iverson & Tabea Springer, “Tabea’s Story”
Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
Andrew Gordon, “The Rules of the Game”
Paul Kennedy, “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers”
David Rothkopf, “National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear”
Barbara Tuckman, “March of Folly” & “The Guns of August”
Vali Nasar, “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat”
Henry Kissinger’s, “Diplomacy” & “World Order”
Daniel James Brown, “The Boys in the Boat”
Willaam Manchester, “American Caesar” & “Goodbye Darkness”
Max Hasting, “Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War”
David Fromkin, “A Peace to End All Peace”
E.B. Sledge, “With the Old Breed”
Michael Walzer, “Just and Unjust Wars”
Wavell, “Other Men’s Flowers” (poetry)
Bing West, “The Village”
Anthony Zinni, “Before the First Shot is Fired”
Malham Wakin, “War, Morality and the Military Profession”
Gail Shisler, “For Country and Corps”
Herman Wouk, “The Caine Mutiny”
Ralph Peter, “Never Quit the Fight”
Max Lerner, “The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes”
Albert Pierce, “Strategy, Ethics and the ‘War on Terrorism’"
Joseph Conrad, “Lord Jim”
T.E. Lawrence, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”
Rudyard Lawrence, “Kim”
James McPherson, “Battle Cry of Freedom”
Archibald Wavell, “The Viceroy’s Journey”

Basically, Mattis just has awesome quotes about everything:

“Initiative has to be practiced daily, not stifled, if it’s to become a reality inside a culture. Every institution gets the behavior it rewards.”

“Be polite, be professional — but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

General Mattis (Sep 08, 1950---) is now the Davies Family Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Intuition at Stanford University. This book is a memoir of Mattis’s forty-year career in the United States Marine Corp. He was a dedicated military man and never married. Mattis had a lifetime interest in history. Mattis holds himself to the highest standard of the Marine Corp and makes no comment about his former Commander-in-Chief.

Mattis includes war stories and discussions of tactical maneuvers. Mattis served in the Persian Gulf War, War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. From 2010 to 2013 he was the Commander of the United States Central Command. From 2017 to 2019 he was the Secretary of Defense. Mattis discussion of leadership is divided between the three areas of leadership: direct, executive and strategic. He also discusses the Rules of Engagement and overall policy goals in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is an excellent book. I learned a lot about leadership from this book. I hope that Mattis will write about his life as the Secretary of Defense in the future.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is twelve hours and one minute. Danny Campbell does an excellent job narrating the book. Campbell is an actor and has won many AudioFile Earphone Awards. He was named Audiophile’s Best of the Year 2017 narrators.

[Simon Mee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine you are on a plane. An older, yet relatively trim, gentleman sits to your left by the window with a book in his lap.

On comes the safety briefing:

If cabin pressure is lost, masks will drop…Put your own masks on first, then help others around you…

The old man pipes up: “It’s a metaphor.”
“A metaphor?” you respond, not sure where this is going.
“Yes. To be a leader, we need to get our act together first, if we want to help others.”
“Ok…”
“It’s just like that great American athletic company says, “Just do it””
“I mean, of course,” shifting your body to exit this conversation while the flight attendant gestures for your attention.

A little later, feeling bad for cutting him off, you ask him about the book he’s reading. The cover is one man engaging in some act of violence against another.
“I’m really trying to broaden my horizons”, he says. “Everything from Starship Troopers to the Battle of Okinawa. Where I work, you need to have intellectual freedom, so my interests range widely”
“How did you get started?”
“Well they gave me a list.”

Later on that day, the old man tells his mates that you looked like a pussy.

Jim Mattis is not stupid or diabolically evil. But nor is he a heroic figure. Jim Mattis is someone who has: a singular focus on the particular role he is serving in; disdain for any subordinates or superiors lacking that same focus; an extreme in-group vs out-group mentality; a preference for depth over breadth; and a preference for aggressive masculinity.

This book covers Mattis’ life prior to being Secretary of Defence. There are also half-hearted allusions to Mattis’ experiences having parallels with the business world but the “insights” are, putting it generously, facile. Mattis' actual business experience includes sitting on the board of pork barrel beneficiary General Dynamics and... ...Theranos, which I don't need a punchline for and neither does Mattis apparently, as he writes nothing on it.

Mattis' military service takes up the bulk of the story, with only a brief reference to his teenage years. According to Mattis, hitch-hiking across America was possible in 1964 as there was a “stronger sense of trust in one’s fellow Americans.” I assume that is why the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Everyone in America trusted each other so much that they decided to ban the discrimination that already didn’t exist.

Mattis’s early Marine experiences demonstrate his in-group vs out-group attitude. After getting rid of one underperforming soldier, he states Where did the malcontents go? Who cared; he was out. When a recruiter under his command is unwilling to work Mattis’ punishing hours: I told the man, “You can be a quitter or you can be a Marine. But you can’t be both” I busted him and ended his career. In 1979 he regrets not getting to potentially kill thousands of Iranian soldiers because the Iranian zealots needed a lesson in humility, leaving us to infer his present views on Iran have not changed, notwithstanding the Iran-Iraq War, the Tanker War and the shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes. As he states, Anything that doesn’t contribute to winning battles or winning Marines is of secondary importance.

Mattis does get his chance to win battles in the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Invasion of Iraq. I don’t see much point in making tactical and operational appraisals here, because (1) I wouldn’t know what I was talking about and (2) it tends to be boring. I would summarise these sections as Mattis killing a lot of people and wishing he could have killed alot more. Reminiscing on all this killing causes a rush of blood to certain areas as Mattis finds the overwhelming need to refer to “manhood.” “Manhood” here appears to be committing violence on Mattis’ terms: My teenage grunts were more men than some guys I’ve met who were twice their age. As for the enemy:

A reporter asked me about the fedayeen threat. I gave a straight answer. “They lack manhood.” I said. “Fighting from among women and children, they’re as worthless example of men as we’ve ever fought”.

Considering that the United States invented the term “collateral damage” for all the women and children it keeps accidentally killing from afar, while using depleted uranium and white phosphorus in Iraqi civilian areas, I would suggest it was not quite the straight answer he thinks it was.

Otherwise, Mattis takes a dump on General Tommy Franks, Paul Bremner and the Coalition Provisional Authority repeatedly, about 15 years too late for any of this to be a fresh take. When dealing with the alleged massacre of women and children by Marines at Haditha, Mattis emphasises how careful he was in reviewing the evidence and assessing the appropriate actions to take. I find it hard to comprehend that Mattis does not realise the problem is not how careful he is being in exercising his judgement, it is that he is the one exercising the judgement.

Mattis' time in the higher echelons of command with NATO and CENTCOM is adequately covered, and his commentary on the need for allies along with the benefits and difficulties in dealing with them is well argued. But saying "allies are good" is a low bar to jump presently. The difficulties are mostly at a personal or operational level, with no wider discussion about the tension betwern the desire for military unity versus the increasingly autocratic nature of allies such as Poland, Hungary and Turkey. Mattis invokes arguments dangerously close to realpolitik when justifying the support of monarchical or dictatorial regimes during the Arab Spring, which sounds all good in practice until you end up funding Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen.

Mattis takes a few swings at the Obama administration, particularly the withdrawal from Iraq, the time limited surge in Afghanistan, the "red line" in Syria, and the "failure" to confront Iran. Mattis makes his arguments and he might even be right for at least some of them. However, a notable theme on a number of these occasions was that Mattis believed America could control the level of escalation:

I did not patronize this enemy. I had dealt with them long enough to know they had not arrived rationally at their hateful, intolerant worldview, and they would not be rationally talked out of it. We had to fight, or there would be worse to come.

I lack his confidence in confrontation.

I am sure at a personal level Mattis can be friendly and engaging. But this book feels like part of his mythlogisation. “Warrior poet” is occasionally ascribed to Mattis. But he really writes that he read everything from Starship Troopers to the Battle of Okinawa. I am left wondering whether Mattis has two tiers of books in his mind: Books about war and garbage. He refers to “General” Lucullus Cornelius Sulla the “Roman soldier,” a description so laughably inadequate it leaves me also wondering whether the books Mattis does read have two tiers of information in his mind: war and garbage.

This book is about war, but it needed to think some more about the "garbage."

[Fountain Of Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book surpassed my expectations. Unlike so many books by people who have recently left the Trump White House, this is not a politicized expose. It is both a memoir and a book about leadership. Mattis devotes little space to his personal life, instead spending large chunks of the book on Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and the second Iraq War, all done as an exploration of leadership (what he did right, what he needed to improve, and what he recommends for others).

Very little of the book is about Mattis' time as Secretary of Defense. He does make it clear that he resigned due to a difference of opinion with the administration, but he focuses more on a general climate of tribalism in America as his principle cause for worry going forward.

All told, I came away with a great respect for both his skill as a soldier and his thirst for improvement through learning. He and Bing West put together a solid book, accessible to advanced high school students and up, all while largely staying above the political fray.

[Brad Lyerla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am thankful for men like Jim Mattis and the sacrifices they have made in defending liberal democracy around the globe. General Mattis seems to have been especially talented at it. He excelled admirably in his career as a Marine.

His book, however, is disappointing. It never manages to become anything other than one dimensional. It reads like a self-improvement booklet on how to become a leader, sprinkled with simple anecdotes that are flat and colorless.

Yet, his role in history is worth understanding better. He fought in Kuwait under George H.W. Bush. He fought in Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And he served in Donald Trump’s cabinet. His book is generally respectful of his commanders-in-chief, but he has some harsh observations about both W and Obama. W for his lack of vision for what to do after Saddam Hussein was deposed. Same for Obama after Osama Bin Laden was killed by Navy Seals, and for his policy of non-confrontation in Syria. As for Trump, General Mattis is mostly silent. It is clear that he disagreed profoundly with Trump’s disdain for NATO and other allies of the United States. But otherwise, he avoids discussing the 45th president.

Mattis also declines to compare the success in Kuwait with the ultimate failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. He advocates that in war you must have a coherent plan for what to do after you achieve your initial military goals. He does not hide that the US lacked such plans in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he also insists that the decisions to pull out of both were unwise. He believes that those missions could have succeeded if the U.S. had persisted with greater determination. Conspicuously, he does not share how the U.S. would have secured victory in either of those wars. In regard to each, it seems that he fails to follow his own advice. Like his commanders, he too lacks the vision of how to win an irregular war.

General Mattis is known for his wide-ranging familiarity with the history of human warfare. As a reader, I would have welcomed his views on what history teaches us about democratic republics fighting foreign wars that linger too long without resolution. Disappointingly, he avoids that topic. Perhaps, he cannot reconcile world history with his stated preferences. He is no philosopher after all. Yet, I suspect that Mattis would hold his own in a conversation with our wonderful soldier philosopher, Marcus Aurelius.

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mattis is a fascinating man. In an age of political tell-alls from former cabinet officials, it’s refreshing to have a more subdued memoir about Mattis’s military career, philosophy, and leadership strategy. My favorite quotes on leadership.

[Joseph Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

If one was hoping for a 'Tell-All-Book' by Jim Mattis about President Trump, I can tell you right off that this is not the book. Maybe, President Trump's name was mentioned 3 or 4 times and not in a negative way. One of General Mattis' heroes is General George Marshall (Sec. of Defense, Sec. of State, and one of the architect's behind the "Marshall Plan," The European Union," and NATO).

Marshall, like Mattis, spend a long time in the military, and one of the codes that military men abide by is not questioning the decisions of a President (Commander in Chief) that they served under, and certainly not in public and not after they have left the service and their Commander in Chief is still alive.

That being said, "Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead" by Jim Mattis and Bing West is one of the most important books I have read this year, and maybe the most important book I have read by a military man. General Mattis served in the Marine Corps. for over forty years during every war over that time and at the front lines in each of those wars, deployed numerous times to Iraq and Afghanistan. The lessons he learned during that time are explained clearly and it would do every military leader, CEO, grunt, and politician a world of good if they read this book.

Just a few salient points Mr. Mattis emphasizes: A military leader who does not read books is not doing his job. Just not military books, but books by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Conrad, and Kipling. Books teach us about history, and about the things that work and don't work. 2) One has to encourage initiative, independent thinking, from all subordinates... from the grunt, to the Corporal, and upward. 3) A soldier should never be reprimanded in public but in private. 4) Trust is most important and there is no substitute for person to person communications with every member, regardless of rank, in your unit, or battalion. 5) Our allies are most important and we are reminder throughout that after 9/11 attacks 39 countries join the fight.

I highly, highly recommend this book. It is a novel that will help keep a soldier alive, instead of being send home in a body bag. It is about leadership and it is an evocation of humanity under the most stressful of conditions.

[CHAD FOSTER · Rating 2 out of 5]

For all practical purposes, this should have been published as two different books. The first of these covers Part I and most of Part II, where General Mattis addresses "direct" and "executive" levels of leadership. The second encompasses Part III, "strategic" leadership.

The latter is a fascinating journey, albeit without as much depth as might have been afforded, through Mattis' tenure as the CENTCOM Commander. This period included the so-called Arab Spring, the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the rise of ISIS, and the secret negotiations between the White House and Iran under the Obama Administration (about which Mattis was kept unaware).

The eariler portion of this book was completely underwhelming. It might be of use for junior leaders just entering positions of authority, in and out of uniform, but there was nothing groundbreaking or more insightful than what one can find in other leadership works. Notably absent was any real exploration of the author's failures or mistakes - REAL exploration. Of course, there are a few half-hearted nods to personal errors, but the cause always seems to be a timid or slow "higher headquarters" or the author just being "too darn aggressive." Neither of these constitute an honest examination of personal shortfalls, and unless the author is some kind of supernatural force, he must have experienced a few real missteps. Instead, we recieved an unbroken stream of "best practices" scattered throughout 245 pages.

Other than the relatively short section at the end of the book covering his time at CENTCOM (and a little bit of the account of his JFCOM tenure), this book treats the reader to many pithy quotes but leaves a lot of rich potential unrealized. Mattis has been lionized by a cult-like group of "fanboys" and "fangirls" both inside the military and in the civilian world. Countless memes referencing knifehands, being prepared to kill everyone, "warrior monkism," etc. have flowed across the internet for several years. Many were funny. None of them were particularly constructive. Much of what Mattis stands for and has to say about leadership is excellent. However, his fanboys and fangirls seem to swoon over his every word and deed, distorting his image into something larger than life. I doubt that this is what the General wants, but it is what we got. This is probably why I mistakenly expected a lot more than what I got out of the first two parts of this book. No serious examinations of personal errors, only half-hearted handwaves. A lot of "rah rah" for the marines (not entirely unjustified, but severely overdone). A long list of pithy quotes that are no better than what you could get from a few Harvard Business Review articles.

The final part of the book was much better, and had he devoted more time and depth to this portion, we would have been better served. Mattis rightly refrained from doing a political tell-all about his time with the administration of President Trump, but his time at CENTCOM (and at JFCOM) could have filled many more pages with indepth accounts of decision-making and strategic thinking in practice.

I wanted to rate this book higher, but I couldn't bring myself to give it 3-stars. Overall, it's still a worthwhile read, if only for Part III. There is little in the first two sections that aren't addressed equally or better in other works. Fans of Mattis are sure to love this book. Those critical of him will find themselves puzzled by the accolades heaped upon it. Personally, I am generally in the middle but closer to the latter group.

[Jimmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit to a lot of disappointment reading this as opposed to other opinions I am reading in the reviews. My big issue is that General Mattis has some accounting to do for his part in the Trump administration. He failed to do that.

Mattis wonders why Trump picked him for Secretary of Defense. Let me be a bit audacious and try to explain to the good General why Trump selected him. Trump is all about show. It was Mattis's nickname that turned Trump on: Mad Dog Mattis. Trump loved that and kept repeating it. Come on, General. You couldn't figure that out? To Trump's surprise, Mad Dog Mattis turned out to be anything but a mad dog. In fact, Mattis is a professional soldier and a gentleman.

One important story is the effort to kill Bin Laden under the George W. Bush administration. General Tommy Franks wanted to send in Afghan soldiers instead of American commandoes. That was a failure and Bin Laden escaped to Pakistan. An untold number of deaths would later happen because of that mistake. Mattis threw Franks under the bus. I am not so sure. If G W Bush was not such an idiot, he might have had a better understanding of what needed to be done. And as a side note, NO, the generals do not always have the right answers.

[Zachery Tyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This....is not a good book.

[Jennifer Stringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often I’ll add The NY Times best sellers to my library Overdrive account. Usually they take a while to finally get to me. As often as not, by the time I get them I decide to pass, especially if it’s part of a series I haven’t read or just sounds dull, and return them immediately. I almost did that with this book, but the first chapter was enough to hook me and keep my interest during my commute.

I guess from the beginning, I was surprised by how literate he was. I admit I had subconsciously accepted the stereotype of the military path as the choice of those with few if any options. It always seemed like the kids I knew who were flunking out of school ended up joining the armed forces (and often washing out there as well.) If nothing else, this book shook me from that assumption, and reminded me that the military, like everywhere else, has all types, with the difference between it and just about everywhere else, being those who join the military have signed a blank cheque up to and including their lives. Nothing to glibly discount. So, I’m grateful for that wake-up call. Mattis has read and studied hundreds of military books - ancient through modern times- and comes to the table highly educated in the art of warfare. I respect him for that alone.

Much of the book is devoted to stating his core principles and how he lived them throughout his career. He states at the very beginning he’s not going to comment on the sitting president (no issue with critiquing past presidents), but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to read between the lines - if you’ve been paying attention to his philosophy on how you treat allies and keeping your honor intact, it’s understandable why he had to resign from the current administration . I think my only real quibble with the book is when he disagrees with decisions of former commander-in-chiefs, he states his case as to why his options were better, etc. and how they would have brought about the desired outcome. But, they could have also escalated into something so much worse or into any number scenarios. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Yes, we missed opportunities and yes they are easier to see after the fact. I hope he also recognizes that as well.

So, I would recommend this book to anyone even mildly interested in how we got to now. I’d say it’s a must read for anyone in the military or considering joining the military. And I would add General James Mattis to my imaginary dinner party guest list. My guess is that he can spin quite a yarn and would have many a fascinating story to tell.

[Jeff Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy a good biography, but this memoir by Jim Mattis was exceptional. When I read his suggested reading list for good leaders at the end of the book, I noticed many books in common that we share. He was very candid about his experience as a Marine commander during several wars but ended the book around his time become Sec Def. The book isn't about his time in the Cabinet, and I'm glad. It focused on the lessons he learned during his 40+ year career of service. He embodies the principles of Virtus that I admire so much and include in my writing. The interview he did at the Council on Foreign Relations when the book came out is also great to watch and shows his character in action.

[Kristina Coop-a-Loop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by Jim Mattis and Bing West is an excellent book. I know when this book was first being publicized there was a lot of guessing if Mattis would include details about his (brief) time serving the Trump administration. I will answer that now: there isn’t. Trump is barely mentioned. Even though this book is categorized as a memoir, I don’t think it fits so neatly into that category. While Mattis does provide details about his life, this is more about his philosophy regarding leadership and what it takes to be a great leader. I found the book enlightening and interesting. Jim Mattis is educated, intelligent, thoughtful and honorable—all traits I fear are scarce these days in leadership positions anywhere, not just government.

Mattis is a Marines man and there is never any doubt about how much he loves the Marines. He is a Marine—blood, body and soul. He is dedicated and loyal, but not blind. Throughout the book, he discusses the errors and failings he sees in military management—not just those above him, but his own failings and shortcomings. He is refreshingly candid in exploring those faults and mistakes he thinks he has made. Mattis immediately dispels my image of the Marines as uneducated, kind of dumb, gung-ho warriors—he discusses the extensive schooling Marines have to go through. Reading, reading, and more reading. Not just military history, but reading in general. And lots of military strategy. I am embarrassed that my former image was so wrong, but I don’t know any Marines and pop culture often doesn’t do the military any favors. If Mattis is gung-ho about anything, it’s about reading and the need for life-long learning:

Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a “conversation” with you. We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical to not take advantage of such accumulated experiences. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you. Any commander who claims he is “too busy to read” is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way. The consequences of incompetence in the battle are final. History teaches that we face nothing new under the sun…Reading sheds light on the dark path ahead. By traveling into the past, I enhance my grasp of the present. (42)

The italicized sentences from this passage is emphasis I added. Mattis’s statement about reading is applicable to anyone’s life, not just those serving in the military or government. I know I sometimes give people the impression that I’m a Ms. Smartypants because I can speak on a lot of topics; I say to them, look, I’m not a damn genius—I just read a lot. It’s important to put current events in perspective by reading a lot of history. That can often be comforting, especially now with political chaos, a decaying democracy and a pandemic. Read about the Middle Ages and the plague, and I guarantee you’ll feel better about living in the 21st century, even with all its troubles and megalomaniac presidents.

What works best for me in this book is Mattis’s philosophy about good leadership and how he applies that to practical real-life situations. He discusses military campaigns he participated in and/or oversaw and their failures and successes and the reasons for those failures/successes. He was often frustrated with the disconnect between the top military brass and the reality of the situation on the ground (where he preferred to be; his love for and dedication to his “grunts” is everywhere in this book). Campaigns sometimes failed, he says, because the top dogs were given incomplete information, were misinformed, or political leaders (aka the current administration) lost their will to carry forth the mission to completion and wimped out. Mattis’s mantra (my interpretation): “If you’re gonna do it, do it right and see the mission through. Fucking it up now only fucks everything up down the road.” He demonstrates the consequences of poorly thought-out and incomplete missions, starting with the invasion of Iraq in the early 1990s. I also liked getting his perspective on journalists and their reports from the frontlines of these battles (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan). Mattis has a very generous view of reporters. He assigns them an NCO (non-commissioned officer, I think; this book is rife with military acronyms and I can’t remember all of them) so they don’t wander into danger but allows them to go where they like: “If there’s something you don’t want people to see, you ought to reconsider what you’re doing. The most compelling story for us should be the naked truth about the reality of our operations…Giving reporters free rein with the troops works only if the commander’s intent is embraced by the troops and genuinely reflected in the operations the reporters witness. Any inconsistency between word and deed would become the story. But seldom was I disappointed” (141).

Even though Mattis doesn’t waste many words on Trump, this entire book is a rebuke of everything Trump and his administration stands for. Trump is functionally illiterate, unable to even read the presidential daily briefings, stumbling and hesitating when he actually reads from a teleprompter (as opposed to when he goes off into his own manic incoherent ramblings and confabulations). It is entirely reasonable to assume that Trump rarely reads anything, much less esoteric volumes by Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, and Caesar; all books that Mattis quotes from, including many other military and political leaders. For Trump, life begins and ends with him; time before him is irrelevant unless he can (mis)use it to make a petty political point. Trump is distrustful of foreign alliances and NATO and is working to end them; Mattis thinks NATO is incredibly important to the stability of the United States:

I believe then and I believe today that NATO is absolutely necessary for geopolitical and cultural solidarity among Western democracies. Friends who share enduring historical values are needed as much today as when we stood united against fascism and communism. Those values are foundational to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. If we didn’t have NATO today, we would have to create it in order to hold onto our Founding Fathers’ vision of freedom and rights for all. We must remember we are engaged in an experiment called democracy, and experiments can fail in a world still largely hostile to freedom. The idea of American democracy, as inspiring as it is, cannot stand without the support of like-minded nations…For those who question the post-Soviet Union value of NATO, it was telling that that an alliance designed originally for the defense of Western Europe fought its first combat campaign in response to the 9/11 attacks on America. It must not be forgotten, in our too often transactional view of allies, that these nations offered up the blood of their sons and daughters in our common defense. As Churchill said, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!” (177)

On page 210, Mattis discusses the problem of political leaders scapegoating their intelligence community, diplomats and predecessors: “It’s frustrating to listen to any leader blame his predecessor, especially a political leader regarding a situation that he knew existed when he ran for office. A wise leader must deal with reality and state what he intends, and what level of commitment he is willing to invest in achieving that end…wise leadership requires collaboration; otherwise it will lead to failure.” Mattis devotes exactly two paragraphs to the 712 days he served as Secretary of Defense for Trump; Trump’s name is never mentioned but it is almost certain that Mattis had his previous employer in mind when he (and Bing West) wrote: “A polemicist’s role is not sufficient for a leader” (244).

As fascinating and thought-provoking as much of the book is, sometimes Mattis and West drop into dry military strategy and pepper the pages with confusing acronyms. The military is of course known for their acronyms and this book does not disappoint. NCO, MEF, CENTCOM, ARCENT, RCT, OODA, MARCENT, JFCOM, SACT, MCCDC, SOF, JECC, AOR…the authors do (usually) define these acronyms, but if you don’t have a military background, it’s difficult to keep them all straight. An appendix listing them would have been helpful for civilian readers.

Call Sign Chaos is at its best when Mattis is pairing his leadership philosophy and theories with real-life situations. He helps the reader with very specific examples and includes maps, emails and letters. Although this book is marketed as a memoir, I would not call it that. Mattis briefly mentions his life before enlisting in the Marines, but he does not again discuss his personal affairs. His romances (if any as he remains a life-long bachelor), sorrows, personal grievances, hobbies—none of this is delved into. There is no navel-gazing in this book. Mattis details his military life and his reflections upon decisions he has made, his leadership philosophies, and his love of reading. Appendix B is reprint of his email to a friend about the absolute necessity of reading to expand knowledge. Mattis often travels into battle with books which he consults as one would a colleague or old friend. Included in this email is a list of his favorite books. It’s a wide-ranging list of military memoirs, strategy, history and fiction; I’ve read only one: The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye. I’m fascinated by its inclusion on his list. It’s a love story, but also an incredible epic with lots of history (the British Empire in India). I highly recommend it, along with this book. I found Call Sign Chaos a perceptive, intelligent, fascinating read and I learned a lot.

[Jarrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had always liked that Mattis was elevated to SecDef. After reading this, I'm convinced we were blessed to have such a humble, straight-forward and educated man running this department for the people of the United States. The book is an easy read and easily one of the better reads on leadership. He emphasizes trust as a key foundation to leadership along with motivation and empathy. One thing that is essential from reading this is education. Constant learning is critical in being able adapt to change and having the confidence of subordinates. If you are uneducated and unwilling to learn, you are guessing and wandering randomly for a conclusion (or in Mattis' case a battle) where results matter and you'll end up short. A brilliant book.

[Colin Milon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Civilian or servicemember, this is a must read. Gen. Mattis found himself leading in every conflict for the last three decades. He provides an unparalleled perspective into America's warfighting machine. Semper Fidelis.

[Alan Tomkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

An autobiography that is part military history and part treatise on leadership, this book is full of valuable insights. Well done, General, and thank you for your service.

[Allison Riding Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of dry and definitely more interesting for someone in the service, but still very inspiring. What a remarkable life devoted to our country. Rah!

[Seth Benzell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mattis portrays himself as well read and cooler-headed than his reputation as a 'mad dog' implies. He blames most of his failures on poor orders from above him -- either high level military, as in Tora Bora (where his marines were asked to sit out a critical assault, to allow Afghanis to take point), or political as in Iraq (he claims that he had inadequate direction on goals, and incompetent support from Bremmer and Bremmer's successors). He is relatively mild about Obama, Biden and Trump, although Obama gets a tounge lashing for the Syria 'red-line' fiasco.

Mattis talks a big game about clear strategic thinking, but he seems to often slip into simplistic arguments (political Islam is bad because an Emir declared that religion and governance don't go together?) and blames the people above him for a lack of it. He does well on helping people to think about more tactical level challenges -- he is a big user of war games and physical, hands-on modelling -- but at the strategic level, while he identifies the problem, this book doesn't inspire confidence that he has the solution.

[Carol Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good insights on leadership and team building, but not much in the way of personal reflection or human interest.

[Jasper Burns · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it is billed as a leadership book, Call Sign Chaos reads more like a narrative or memoir (from which one can glean many useful leadership lessons). I found Secretary Mattis's exposé on the wars of the past four decades to be fascinating. You follow his rise from the lowest ranks in the Marine Corps to General and Secretary of Defense. Along the way, you learn much about warfare, the stakes, the people, and the decisions made. Like with General McMaster's book Dereliction of Duty, one often feels acutely aware of how many of the bad decisions in warfare come from Washington. Political pressure seems a deadly phenomenon.

I have compiled the notes I highlighted from the book below into a reduced and readable “Sparknotes.”

** Leadership **

Mattis is a proponent of a centralized vision, with decentralized planning and execution, so the military practice of defining a “Commander’s Intent” is important to his leadership style. CI has to be achievable, understandable, and deliver what the unit was tasked with achieving.

The mantra of “no better friend, no worse enemy” was one of his centralized visions, or “touchstones” as he called them. In any situation on the ground, his Marines could use that phrase to judge how to act in any given situation. The same philosophy applied also to the leadership of his troops. He spent a lot of effort working to amply reward his men. He also described at least two stories of ending men’s careers. Reward well and incentivize good behavior, but if you can’t help a man improve you must be willing to excise him.

His caring behavior folds neatly into his “Three C’s of Leadership”: competence, caring, and conviction. Competence is self-explanatory and applies to all facets of life—from physical fitness to intellectual ingenuity. Caring involves being interested in the welfare of your subordinates, as a coach rather than a friend. The last C is conviction. State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. At the same time, leaven your professional passion with personal humility and compassion for your troops.

Leadership requires staying attuned to their higher headquarters’ requirements. Don’t be myopically focused on your organization’s internal workings. Time spent sharing your reality with your superiors is seldom wasted. Furthermore, as one ascends a hierarchy honest information is harder to come by. Vietnam vets reminded him that once you made general, you “never had a bad meal and you never again heard the truth.” 

When in command, he gathered information using “focused telescopes.” He needed data without fatiguing his subordinate commanders with information requests. He used officers with sound judgment who he trusted to give impartial reports in concise terms, bypassing the normal reporting channels. What kept them from being seen as a spy ring by his subordinate commanders was their ability to keep confidences when those commanders shared concerns, they knew that information would be conveyed to him alone.

He breaks information into three categories: housekeeping, decision-making, and alarms. The first allows one to be anticipatory—for example, housekeeping includes munitions levels and ship locations. Decision-making information maintains the rhythm of operations designed to ensure that OODA loops function at the speed of relevance. The third, alarms, addressed critical events—for instance, a U.S. embassy in distress or a new outbreak of hostilities. “Alarm” information had to be immediately brought to his attention, day or night.


Once decisions are made, one ought to take the time to reflect, and he felt a lack of reflection on past decisions to be the single biggest deficiency for himself and other senior decision-makers.


** Organizations **

Once in the fight, he would not rearrange organizations. He wanted the members of each team to know one another so well that they could predict each other’s reactions. Strangers who haven’t trained together don’t work smoothly together.

When you have to give up personnel, the tendency is to hang on to your best. When tasked with supporting other units, select those you most hate to give up. Never advantage yourself at the expense of your comrades.

Outsiders can provide impartial, useful, third-party critique and processes. Foreign units send some of their best officers when given the opportunity and outside liaison officers, employed well, bring further strength to operations. 


Competitive organizations must nurture their maverick thinkers. You can’t wash them out of your outfit if you want to avoid being surprised by your competition. Without mavericks, we are more likely to find ourselves at the same time dominant and irrelevant, as the enemy steals a march on us.

Where organizations become too bureaucratic, skip-echelon reorganization can work to restore the speed of decisions and agility. By reducing the size of headquarters staffs, one reduces demands for information flow from subordinate units, which could then principally focus on the enemy rather than answering higher headquarters’ queries. If skip-echelon is not enough, removing entire organizations can clear the pipes. Mattis dismantled one of his own major commands, JFCOM, saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

** Warfighting **

Death is a part of war and leading the military means sending people to die. He had a handwritten card that lay on his Pentagon desk which read, “Will this commitment contribute sufficiently to the well-being of the American people to justify putting our troops in a position to die?” He shared the quote, “To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love… That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men.” To maintain his emotional equilibrium, he knew he couldn’t be informed about the names or the number of casualties unless their mission was jeopardized.

Mattis sees the construction of the military with a three-tiered goal: to maintain a safe and credible nuclear deterrent, to sustain a compelling conventional force capable of deterring or winning a state-on-state war, and be competent in irregular warfare. Lethality is the metric by which we should evaluate our military to best deter our adversaries and win conflicts at the lowest cost to our troops’ lives. A focus on lethality means the military is not to be a petri dish for social experiments.

The key to preparation for battle is imaging. The goal is to ensure that every grunt has fought a dozen times, mentally and physically, before he ever fires his first bullet in battle, tastes the gunpowder grit in his teeth, or sees blood seeping into the dirt. Similarly, for commanders, he used lego blocks and jersey exercises to rehearse the movements of the war and found logistics traffic jams this way.


Wars happen fast. It took just twenty-eight days to conceive, plan, persuade, and execute the invasion of Afghanistan. 

Air power has changed warfare in the past decades. In the ’90s, they had to calculate how many aircraft it would take to destroy a target. Now they calculate how many targets each aircraft can destroy.


Effects-based operations, a sound targeting doctrine developed to degrade enemy capabilities, does not translate well into the more unpredictable realms of general warfighting. EBO requires predictable effects and centralized command and control, neither of which work well in wars that scale beyond precision targeting. Disbanding EBO at JFCOM and elsewhere was a major push by General Mattis. He again pushed for decentralized control around a shared Commander’s Intent.

Tactics require a heavy focus on contingencies. He expressed out loud to his troops how their assault might be screwed up. “What if I went down?” he asked them in informal sessions. “What if radio communications are lost at night during a chemical attack?” In a future war, these communications are certain to be broken. Therefore, we have to know how to continue fighting when (not if) our networks fail. Because opportunities and catastrophes on the battlefield appear and disappear rapidly, only a decentralized command system can unleash a unit’s full potential.

Splitting adversarial forces is a useful concept in warfare. In his fast-moving campaigns during the Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman habitually sought to threaten two objectives before he attacked. This forced the Confederate generals to split their forces, giving Sherman a decisive advantage when he made his lunge.

Study the enemy, including the specific commanders. Were they aggressive or tentative? Where had they gone to military school? What had they studied? What did their subordinates gossip about them? He wanted to know his enemies weaknesses and, most importantly, whether or not they would take the initiative. He kept pictures of those generals in his desk drawer. In any confrontation, you need to know your enemy.


Much talk has been given to having an “exit strategy.” His thought was that “exiting” a war was a by-product of winning that war. Unless you want to lose, you don’t tell an enemy when you are done fighting, and you don’t set an exit unrelated to the situation on the ground.

** Politics **

Mattis found the Gulf War an example of American power being used properly. President H.W. Bush built a coalition of Western and Arab states, furnished the military with forces and direction, and avoided political overreach once Kuwait was freed. Mattis thinks that once an objective is properly defined, overwhelming forces were rightly deployed to end the war swiftly. He did so by gathering public, congressional, and international support. There was a defined, limited, and achievable end state for forces to work towards, and there was no mission creep. Mattis’s political praise on Bush’s handling of this conflict was the most glowing he gave throughout the book. The later presidents he served under, including the younger Bush, would not receive such acclamation.

While he didn’t rebuff the war in Afghanistan, invading Iraq stunned Mattis. Most disheartening was how it was mishandled once begun. In war-games before the invasion, another general noted that what comes after deposition of Saddam will be the real war, but the military was receiving no political guidance for these long term plans. With hindsight, it’s amazing to see how large a mistake this was.

Poor guidance from Washington was a common theme in the book. Commanders planned without knowing the answers to the most basic questions: Did the invasion mean going all the way to Baghdad or only deep enough to force Saddam to allow UN inspectors back into the country? These and other gaps in understanding required them to plan largely in a vacuum. Mattis described similar failures during the rebuilding of Iraq, and how his queries up the chain of command went largely unanswered.

He further described the imprudence which categorized the reconstruction of the Iraqi government. Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army and banned most members of the Baath Party from government positions, removing the instruments of governance, public services, and security. Mattis thought that demobilizing the Iraqi Army instead of depoliticizing it set the most capable men in the country on an adversarial course against us. He paints the assumption that Iraq was ready to handle its governance as misguided. Iraqi leaders did not understand democracy and that it requires sharing power, not consolidating it. While subtle in his criticism, it seemed that Mattis blames Bush and his staff for these and other failures.


The Obama administration did not escape critique either. The White House was set on a total troop withdrawal for political reasons. In Mattis’s judgment, securing the gains of seven years of war would require keeping troops and diplomatic engagement in Iraq. Japan and Korea are good examples of how American long-term presence can stabilize once war-torn countries. Obama and Biden wanted to pull out at all costs. As a result, Prime Minister Maliki imprisoned and drove out Sunni representatives, disenfranchising a third of the country and leading to revolts and an increase in terrorist power as the CIA had predicted. This premature withdrawal seems to have created the opportunity for the rise of ISIS. Mattis asserted that “supporting a sectarian Iraqi prime minister and withdrawing all U.S. troops were catastrophic decisions… This wasn’t a military-versus-civilian flaw or a Democrat-versus-Republican error. It went deeper. At the top, then as now, there was an aura of omniscience. The assessments of the intelligence community, our diplomats, and our military had been excluded from the decision-making circle.”

Obama’s failure to enforce his “red line” on chemical weapons in Syria was also roundly attacked. Mattis found our reputation severely weakened as a result. He loosely implies that Syria’s disintegration, the refugee crisis, and further terror attacks would have been better mollified by holding Assad accountable and that “America today lives with the consequences of emboldened adversaries and shaken allies.”


While at CENTCOM, Mattis acknowledged two principal adversaries: stateless Sunni Islamist terrorists and the revolutionary Shiite regime of Iran. He considers Iran by far the more dangerous threat. In 2011, two Iranians, with approval from Tehran, were arrested for nearly bombing the Cafe Milano in Washington D.C. This would have been an act of war had the bomb gone off, it would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11 and would have changed history. Mattis sensed that it was Iran’s impression of America’s impotence and fear of conflict which emboldened them to risk such an attack so close to the White House. Iran is a radical power, not a moderate one. He judges that our gamble with the Iran Nuclear Deal was poorly calculated.

In addition to Iran, he considers Pakistan to be one of the most dangerous countries he’s dealt with because of the radicalization of its society and the availability of nuclear weapons. Circumstances can change rapidly in the Middle East. The Iranian revolution occurred without warning, and ISIS rose quickly from nothing. If a radical uprising happened within a nuclear power, the consequences would be terrifying. 

Countering these major threats requires allies. Mattis believes that NATO is absolutely necessary for geopolitical and cultural solidarity among Western democracies. At the same time, he believes that Europe must contribute more and that NATO cannot hold together if the burden-sharing continues to be so unequal.

View my best reviews and a collection of my mental models at jasperburns.blog.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

”What concerns me most, as a military man, coming out of a diverse yet unified culture, is not our external adversaries, instead it is our internal divisiveness. We are dividing into hostile tribes curing against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardize our future, Instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions.”

Mattis is nothing but a man seeking to serve his country in his every action. His discussions of honor and duty are almost reminiscent of an older time, a different generation. It’s not that those things no longer exist, but it seems we’re surrounded by stories of the mega successful. How they got there. Who they beat out to be where they are. How hard they had to “grind” before making it big. Mattis instead is all about living a life in service for others. Several times he discusses periods where he thought he would be returning home to the PNW to enjoy the outdoors once again, but was instead called to another job. He didn’t see it as a burden. He states that when your country asks you to serve, you do it. It feels like a mentality that is so unusual for the famous people we generally read and hear about now.

This was about his 40 years in the military so it is obviously very focused on stories surrounding that time. Military strategy and life are recounted time and time again. At times, not being a big military/war strategy buff, this was a bit dry. However, his retellings also shed light on things I remember having seen in the news at various times. And even more interesting for me were things I remember my military friends having spoken about.

Almost every person in the military that I know, is an officer. Having read a number of stories written about and by enlisted men, it was very interesting to read a memoir from another officer. Granted, a very distinguished officer, but still someone with a mentality that is familiar to me because of the people I have known. I kept thinking how they would have responded or how they did respond in similar situations to what he described. He often discusses the wrist slaps and rebukes he got for decisions he made. I felt he was incredibly generous to people, like the media, for judgments they made as individuals who were never in the type of position he and his men were in. He does mention the repercussions of things that appear in the media when written without a full understanding, but I did not feel it was accusatory, more of a “be careful what you write.”

”If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”

I love how much he talks about the importance of reading. He mentions that without reading, your knowledge is limited. In his line of work, a lack of knowledge can lead to the death of the men around him. It was so powerful to read this. It’s one thing to believe in reading to expand our imaginations, to learn about other people, but to use it as a weapon, as a defense and offense in multiple situations, especially extreme ones, how by not reading, you can literally be responsible for deaths that didn’t need to happen...just wow. I have mentioned this in another review, but I have met too many people, especially folks my age who say they don’t read non-fiction because it feels like being in school. I don’t think I’ll ever stop reading fiction, but reading Mattis’s opinions on the importance of avid reading and how it often fueled his decisions in and out of the military, cements even more in my mind, the opinion that we MUST continue to read non-fiction voraciously.

Fascinating history of his learnings through his time in the history and working in the government. He mentions at the end that he prides himself on no one knowing his political party. I remember a young officer I knew, who spoke about his own passion for a certain president on television and was later chastised by his leadership. He blew it off and said he didn’t care. This is the attitude I attribute to many in the younger generation. Seeing Mattis’s continued devotion, even after being out of the military, to respecting his position, demonstrates even further what kind of man he is, consistently holding true to his beliefs. It’s pretty incredible and this attitude rang throughout every story told in this memoir.

[Seth Gilliam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on leadership. Be brilliant in the basics. Give responsibility to subordinates, allowing them to shoulder the load. Have a bias for action. When a problem arises, observe, orient, decide, then act before your enemy. And when you step into new leadership roles, curate relevant books and be a voracious reader and student of history. As Mattis says, history shines a light on the dark uncertain paths that lie ahead, no matter how dim at times. My only detraction, I would’ve enjoyed learning more about his time as Secretary of Defense.

[Andy Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many things to admire about this memoir by General Jim Mattis; at the top is that it shows his character, his loyalty to his fellow Marines and his loyalty to his country.
An example is at the beginning when Mattis was a Lieutenant training his troops in the jungle, it was reported to him that one marine had muttered that "He'd like to kill his fucking hard-ass Lieutenant." Mattis had that marine follow him to the base and at the end told him that you could have shot me in the back but you didn't have the guts. Mattis turned him over to his senior NCO who got rid of the malcontent. Mattis explained why he had the NCO take action even though Mattis outranked the NCO and then complemented the Sergeant saying "Every Lieutenant needs a Sergeant Mata, a man with 25 years of experience and a hundred friends in other duty stations"
In describing his experience as a Junior Officer and why he stayed in the Marines Mattis wrote "I choose to find a home among warriors because I was drawn in by the cocky, exuberant, devil make care spirit of our grunts. I loved being with the troops, gaining energy from their infectious, often sardonic enthusiasm"
The memoir tells of his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and command of the 1st battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment and describes his command in the first Iraq War. Mattis balances the importance of training and preparation with acknowledging the challenge of "first combat" for the troops. The battles that Mattis are detailed and he concludes with admiration of President George H.W. Bush on how he ended the first Iraq war.
The Mattis spirit is throughout the book. He describes one discipline incident with the quote "Praise in Public, Criticize in Private" and I noted that throughout the book he lived up to his example. His memoir is replete with complementing Marines of all ranks by name, yet when he describes relieving a Colonel from command, busting Officers for mistakes in leadership, they are all nameless.
Mattis talks of other virtues; he explains that being physically vigorous is not inconsistent with being intellectually at the top of your game, both attributes are stressed throughout the book, one section is titled " Read Read Read"
The memoir describes his command in Afghanistan, the success on the battlefield tempered by the decision by his superiors to not deploy his Marines in Tora Bora; he quotes General Tommy Frank's memoir as to why that decision was made and Mattis then rebuts it, concluding regret about the escape of Bin Laden
Mattis starts the narrative on the second Iraq war by stating that the decision to invade Iraq stunned me and then explains the reasoning for his disagreement and how he communicated that to his superiors and then accepting his Superior's statement that it was a Washington decision and that his job was to get the troops ready.
Mattis did get his troops ready and again achieved success on the battlefield. But the memoir chafes at the constraints put on his troops, with Ambassador Bremner receiving much blame. An example was the response after four American contractors were killed and displayed in Fallujah. Mattis planned a response that would include Iraqis that would immediately provide security and deliver justice on a discriminate basis, learning the identities and locations of the ringleaders and respond with attacks on them at American choosing. But Mattis was overruled by civilians and ordered to attack Fallujah. Mattis carried out the order he disagreed with and then once inside was ordered to prematurely pull back.
Mattis summarizes: "I believed I had let my men down, having failed to prevent the attack in the first place, then not prevent a stop order once deep inside the city... because higher level decisions cost lives"
The memoir continues addressing this tension between military decisions based on national security and safety of the troops with political decisions, including his service under the Obama administration. Mattis a true patriot, he always accepted civilian authority, but that does not prevent from his discussing why those decisions can be wrong and wrongly put the lives of the American military "on the ground" at risk.
Jim Mattis is a great American, his memoir is a great lesson for all of us

[Aaron Bright · Rating 5 out of 5]

That’s one of THE most useful books I’ve ever read in my life, and I feel like it’s timing couldn’t have been better. Lots of times I finish a book and think “where have you been all my life,” but not this time. From 20 years of being an officer and a commander, I see clearly what he’s talking about - much clearer than I ever would have earlier in my career. Almost every sentence in these pages resonated with me on some level. GEN Mattis is a man among men who’s typically the smartest one in the room nowadays, as long as you’re willing to see it and understand what it is he’s saying. He’s a badass and I want nothing more than to sit down and bullshit with him now. I need someone to help me make that happen. Thanks.

[Leia Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The gap between those who fight and those who don’t is far too wide. I appreciate so much General Mattis’ perspective on so many things.

[Joseph Reilly · Rating 1 out of 5]

This work is long-winded and self-aggrandizing. I listed the problems I had with it.

1. Trump has bullied General Mattis and General Kelly both Vietnam-era Marines over the past few years after Trump fired Mattis. Trump has called these two stupid and hurled other insults at them. General Kelly said Trump called dead Marines losers and suckers and yet both of these guys can not find the intestinal fortitude to defend the honor of the Marines. They both have become pathetic public figures and are disgraceful in many aspects. Getting bullied by a draft-dodging nepo baby is unacceptable, especially for Vietnam-era Marines.

2. General Mattis's cowardice toward Trump makes me wonder about all of Mattis's bluster and bloviating. Mattis talks a big game, but I prefer a more stoic approach to life and service. I briefly met Mattis when I was a guard sentry in Kuwait in 2003, and he seemed professional in our brief encounter, but all of his speeches and big talk seem inauthentic to me. I was impressed with my encounters with General Pace, with whom I had a pleasant conversation with and General Hagee with whom I had the privilege of dining with. These men are extremely easygoing and are nonbragadocious, and I was very impressed.

3. President Obama's firing of Jim Mattis seemed warranted. We were winding down from two unpopular wars at the time, and Mattis was endorsing actions that could lead to further wars in the Middle East, in Iran, and in Syria. Mattis could not read the administration and the American public's opinion. Mattis's bull-in-a-china-shop approach does not work in the political arena. War was not an option at that time, and I think Obama made the right choice.

4. The Patton-like bluster is ridiculous. I understand this talk in the field because the officers want to motivate their men, but he is retired now, and he could have discussed real feelings and conversations. The book would have been better if Mattis talked about human things like fear, grief, and regret.

[Phaedra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always interested in the measured thought and long views of General Mattis, and it is a breath of fresh air to get it directly from the horse's mouth. Out of all the memoirs that have been released, Mattis' is the one I looked forward to the most. His position as the foremost "Warrior Scholar" in the nation has made me have faith in our future direction.

I truly enjoyed the book, and the insights into how he became the leader he is. And make no mistake, this book is (as the title tells you) a primer on how to be a leader. The anecdotes illustrate the lessons, and also reiterate many of the ideas that makes the Marine Corps unique: resourcefulness, tenacity, how to make do when you have little or nothing to make do with, a little bit of hell raising, and getting the job done. Particularly helpful in my opinion was all the emphasis put on building up your people, so that they are properly equipped to help YOU get the job done.

Unfortunately many of the Flag grade officers seem to have taken a different approach.

Overall this is a good book on leadership (though I feel that It Doesn't Take a Hero might have some other lessons that help emphasize some of the most important ideas), and it was nice to have the veil officially pulled aside on one of the greatest military minds we have.

[Ray Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll give it to you straight, this is not a Trump exposé. Given the timing of the release of the autobiography, many have read into Mattis' lessons on leadership as an indictment of our current president, but it isn't. There are a few sentences in the first appendix that explain, in his resignation letter, that he felt the current administration had lost faith with the nation's allies. However, there isn't a word against Trump specifically.

As a biography of a leader in war, peace and preparedness, this is a first class piece of literature. Mattis is a legend and this is the real deal. In a peace conference with Iraqi war lords he explains: "I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f--- with me, I’ll kill you all." Mattis is the man. He is eloquent and well read. Mattis explains how his reading of ancient Roman history informed his decision making in combat. He also explains his leadership strategy. This is a valuable book and well worth reading.

[Miri Niedrauer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whether or not this is accurate to Mattis' true nature is difficult to judge, but this book would have been far more tolerable if written by someone else. As it is, it comes across as Mattis endlessly bragging about all the amazing decisions he made (someone else's fault if it didn't work out) or the amazing decisions he would have made (if someone else didn't stop him).

Judging strictly from this autobiography, Mattis comes across as self-absorbed and self-obsessed, lacking any sort of humility, and convinced that he actually is the God that Marines love to see him as.

[Graham · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was disappointed that he left out any details about his time as SecDef. I think he took himself far too seriously as a scholar and tried to come across as a professor and as a result its not an interesting read and overly detailed in places
A far better read is Guy Snodgrass's Holding the Line - you actually get to know Mattis a bit better in that book
Not as good as other military biographies either