From one of the great naval leaders of our time, a master class in decision-making under pressure through the stories of nine famous acts of leadership in battle drawn from the history of the United States Navy, with outcomes both glorious and notorious
At the heart of Admiral James Stavridis’s training as a naval officer was the preparation to lead sailors in combat, to ably face the decisive moment in battle when it arises. In To Risk it All, he offers up nine of the most useful and enthralling stories from the US Navy’s nearly 250-year history, and draws from them a set of insights that we can all put to use when confronted with fateful choices.
Conflict. Crisis. Risk. These are words that have a meaning in a military context that we hope will never apply in quite the same way in our own lives. At the same time, as To Risk it All shows with great clarity, many lessons are universal.
To Risk it All is filled with thrilling and heroic exploits, but it is anything but a shallow exercise in myth burnishing. Every leader in this book has real flaws, as all humans do, and the stories of failure, or at least decisions that have been defined as such, are as crucial as the stories of success. In the end, when this master class is dismissed, we will be better armed for hard decisions both expected and not.
