To Risk It All
Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision
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4.6 • 24 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
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 face the decisive moment in battle whenever it might arise. 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 words have a distinct meaning in a military context that we hope will never apply identically in our own lives. But at the same time, as Admiral Stavridis 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 the decisions that have been defined as such, are as crucial as the stories of success. In the end, when this master class is concluded, we will be better armed for hard decisions both expected and not.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Retired U.S. Navy admiral Stavridis (coauthor, 2034) unpacks nine instances of critical decision-making in this insightful mix of naval history and leadership guide. Capt. John Paul Jones let his emotions "provide a powerful spur to action" when he refused to surrender to the British warship Serapis in 1779, while Lieut. Stephen Decatur combined "audacity" with "rock-solid planning" when he rescued a captured American vessel from Tripoli harbor in 1804. Elsewhere, Stavridis shows that "tolerance for risk" was crucial to U.S. Navy commander David Farragut's attacks against Confederate strongholds during the Civil War, and documents USS West Virginia crew member Doris "Dorie" Miller's heroic actions during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Stavridis also spotlights Adm. Michelle Howard, who commanded the rescue of cargo ship captain Richard Phillips after he was taken hostage by Somali pirates in 2009, and Capt. Brett Crozier, who "did the right thing" when he sent a controversial "red-flare email" pleading for help dealing with a Covid-19 outbreak aboard his ship in March 2020. Stavridis's brisk tour of U.S. naval history is action-packed and colorful, and the leadership lessons, though somewhat repetitive, contain nuggets of counterintuitive wisdom. Readers will come away both entertained and informed.
