The Art of Manliness - #373： The Leader's Bookshelf

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast it's been said

00:00:18.660 leaders are readers but what should a leader read my guest today set out to answer that question by

00:00:23.400 pulling four-star generals and admirals in the u.s military to get their best recommendations

00:00:27.380 his name is admiral james stavridis he served as the commander of u.s southern command u.s european

00:00:32.020 command and nato supreme allied commander europe he now serves as dean of the fletcher school of law

00:00:36.480 and diplomacy at tufts university in his book the leader's bookshelf admiral stavridis explains why

00:00:40.940 reading is fundamental for all leaders and provides a list of 50 books suggested by senior officers we

00:00:46.220 begin our conversation today by discussing the culture of reading amongst military officers

00:00:49.960 past and present including general james mattis and george patten admiral stavridis then shares

00:00:54.480 tips on how to read more even with the busy schedule and how to get more out of your reading

00:00:58.320 we then dig into the list of 50 books military brass recommend the most and the lessons on

00:01:02.480 leadership they provide you're going to be adding a lot of books to your reading list after listening

00:01:06.520 this podcast so take notes after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash leaders

00:01:11.960 bookshelf all right admiral james stavridis welcome to the show great to be with you brett so you wrote

00:01:27.560 a book co-authored a book called the leader's bookshelf obviously said you're you're an admiral

00:01:31.600 in the navy i'm curious what was the genesis of this book the book grew out of a love of books

00:01:39.480 and the way it tactically occurred was that i had completed four years as the supreme allied

00:01:46.060 commander of nato and my publisher random house asked me to do a memoir so i did it's called the

00:01:53.320 accidental admiral and then they came to me and said okay admiral now would like you to write a

00:01:59.120 leadership book and as you know brett the world is awash in leadership books there are far too many

00:02:05.300 of them and so what i thought i would try and do instead of writing yet another hands on hips

00:02:12.240 then i told the president to launch the tomahawks kind of book i thought why not take my love of books

00:02:19.000 and pour it into a single volume that tries to cut through this thicket of books that make you a

00:02:27.180 better leader and hence uh i found a co-author and the two of us worked together uh for a couple of

00:02:34.160 years finding books that we thought helped people become better leaders and that is the genesis of

00:02:42.120 the leader's bookshelf and the way you went about finding these books is you asked other officers in

00:02:47.440 the military what their most influential book on leadership that they read and what i was amazed is

00:02:52.620 like the breadth of the the authors you reached out to and the the diversity of books i mean would

00:02:58.520 you say there's a culture of reading amongst military officers in the united states or even in

00:03:03.440 just the world oh absolutely absolutely so think of general jim mattis who's currently the secretary of

00:03:11.740 defense when he and i were working in the pentagon together over a decade ago he was a one-star

00:03:18.140 officer he's a bit older than i am i was a navy captain but we became very close friends and

00:03:24.080 exchanged book ideas constantly in fact if you flip over the leader's bookshelf you'll see a very nice

00:03:29.960 blurb from general jim mattis i think general mattis owns somewhere around 4 000 books my own library is

00:03:38.080 probably 5 000 books general john kelly the current chief of staff in the white house inveterate reader and

00:03:45.880 there are two reasons for that one is that as a military officer you actually end up with a

00:03:51.660 surprising amount of time to read on airplanes as you're waiting to go on an operation as you're

00:03:59.060 on a ship in the case of a navy admiral like me sailing home from the pacific there's actually as the

00:04:05.740 saying goes about war it's a hurry up but wait business and there's a lot of waiting so so there is

00:04:12.920 time in a military career to read and secondly i would say because our business is so serious

00:04:18.780 that of war that you need chances to step outside it to refresh yourself in every dimension from

00:04:27.800 fiction to non-fiction to geography to history to politics and all of those kinds of books are

00:04:34.060 represented in the leader's bookshelf and this culture of reading amongst military officers goes

00:04:38.420 back even decades i mean you highlight george patten which a lot of people wouldn't think

00:04:42.860 based on the reputation he's has as being a sort of scholar and thinker and reader but old blood and

00:04:48.100 guts that guy read you know prolifically oh indeed and all of those uh world war ii generals and admirals were

00:04:56.400 enormously well read and and as i did more research for this book i kept tripping over various sites

00:05:04.880 where you can look at the the library the titles in the library of george marshall for example these

00:05:11.800 are officers and many of them that world war ii generation don't forget didn't grow up watching

00:05:17.160 television because there really wasn't much television so they they came out of a culture of

00:05:23.100 of reading and i think that's very much alive in the military today i'll give you one other example

00:05:28.340 of it each of the service chiefs so the chief of naval operations who leads the navy the chief of staff of

00:05:34.180 the army who leads the army each of them publish lists of books that they think are useful and

00:05:40.340 oriented toward the service particularly again leaders bookshelf is an attempt to cut across all

00:05:46.920 of the services and really about cutting across all dimensions of leadership it's not a book for the

00:05:53.120 military it's a book for anyone who seeks to lead others and why do you think reading is so

00:05:59.340 fundamental for leaders no matter what where they're leading next there's that saying that

00:06:04.160 i've heard before you know leaders are readers why why is that i'll give you three reasons the first is

00:06:10.700 we only get one lifetime right but by reading you get to dip into dozens and dozens and dozens of

00:06:19.280 other lives and so whenever you're reading you're tapping into other experiences that you can bring

00:06:28.360 to leadership secondly reading refreshes the mind it is a chance to be intimate with yourself and an

00:06:38.380 author and it gives you a chance to be away from that mindless daily 24-hour visual news cycle

00:06:48.000 and to really contemplate you should almost think of it as exercise for the mind and then thirdly it's

00:06:55.180 fun it's entertaining it's a it's a great hobby to be able to pick up a book and jump back 200 years

00:07:02.440 in history and suddenly you're sailing at sea with lord nelson at the battle of trafalgar so i think for

00:07:08.380 those three reasons leaders tend to be readers so before we get into some of the books that are

00:07:14.720 highlighted in the leaders bookshelf you have these great chapters on how to read more how to get more

00:07:20.540 out of your reading i'd love to get your insights into this because now you're also a college dean

00:07:25.280 correct i am i'm the dean of the fletcher school of law and diplomacy at tufts university where i did

00:07:31.160 my own phd back in my 20s the navy took me off five years of sea duty and sent me here i was a good

00:07:39.600 mariner and i could launch a tomahawk missile but in those days i couldn't launch an idea to save my

00:07:44.440 life and graduate school here at the fletcher school shaped me and it made me very hungry to come

00:07:51.780 back and give back to this institution which is what i've done by becoming the dean so yeah let me say

00:07:57.520 a word about first finding time to read and there are little tricks of the trade that serious readers

00:08:05.140 follow one i think today is pretty obvious and it's using technology and that is instead of hauling

00:08:11.340 around four or five books you take your kindle or i read very effectively on my iphone it's just

00:08:18.140 adapting yourself to using the electronic means we have available makes you a much more efficient

00:08:25.120 reader secondly finding time in the course of the day to read in little chunks and and this relates

00:08:33.220 to the first point which is that when you've got your electronic device with you that previously

00:08:39.560 dead 10 minutes waiting for a bus or jumping in or out of an airport standing in the tsa security line

00:08:46.480 everybody's favorite activity read thirdly i think it's uh very effective to record what you've read

00:08:54.860 and i i would advocate having a small journal of reading that you're doing you can maintain that

00:09:01.560 electronically on the same device but keep track of the books you're reading i at the end of the year

00:09:07.140 i like to total them up i like to go back and read the notes i've taken and that brings me to a fourth

00:09:12.940 thing which is underlining and highlighting and marginalia now you can do this electronically or you

00:09:20.300 can do it on a paper copy of a book but force yourself to really interact with that book don't don't

00:09:26.760 skim through it and then fifth and finally not all books are great books brett and so if you start a book

00:09:35.060 and you're not enjoying it or not getting out of it what you'd hope to quit move on to a different book

00:09:41.920 so often people say to themselves okay i'm gonna read dostoyevsky and then they start reading

00:09:48.060 the brothers karamazov and they realize they hate dostoyevsky

00:09:51.500 and yet they they slug through it painfully it becomes like scourging yourself in the middle ages

00:09:58.560 recognize that there are endless books and endless choices and don't be afraid to stop

00:10:04.020 if a book isn't working for you so there's five thoughts to make you a better reader that's great

00:10:08.940 and and your personal reading habits are you reading multiple books at the same time and sort

00:10:12.680 of switching between them i do although i do limit myself to two and as you might expect typically i'll

00:10:21.460 have one book of fiction going and one book of non-fiction going and i find that just is a way to

00:10:28.320 kind of refresh and step away from a particular scene and i find when i come back to a book after taking

00:10:35.400 a break to look at another book i often come with fresh insight fresh ideas and two however i think is

00:10:41.420 what works for me i do know some people that will juggle more than that my wife for example 0.91

00:10:45.840 but two strikes me for a serious reader about the right number and speaking of taking notes

00:10:51.400 the other sort of interesting tidbit about general patent was that he would type out on note cards

00:10:56.580 his notes and i thought that was interesting indeed and i know a number of people who take

00:11:03.320 the note taking piece of this to very high levels and have a file folder either electronic or paper on each

00:11:11.300 book i don't quite go that far but i do rely on the notes that i've taken to lead me back

00:11:19.080 and if i'm doing research for example right now brett i'm working on a book about character you know

00:11:26.160 leadership is exerting influence over others character is leading yourself it's character i always

00:11:33.160 say is what you do when you think no one is looking and so i've been reading a lot of biography of

00:11:39.680 various individuals and um so as distinct from just if you will casual day-to-day reading when i'm

00:11:46.340 reading for a project and reading for research then i'm taking very meticulous notes so i can get

00:11:51.600 back to sections as i drive them into the book i'm working on next so let's get to these 50 books that

00:11:57.460 you highlight sure in the book so when you went out and talked to these different officers in the

00:12:02.680 military what their recommendations were and you got the results back what were you most surprised

00:12:08.500 by in the recommendations i was pleasantly surprised at the number of novels the amount of fiction in the

00:12:16.480 list i was secondly very happy to see some classics of memoir for example ulysses s grant's personal

00:12:27.100 memoirs perhaps the most brilliant introspective book about character that i've come across so seeing a lot

00:12:36.720 of not a lot but but seeing representative memoirs biography and autobiography very gratifying and

00:12:44.100 then you see quite a bit of the history that you would sort of expect and i was also happy to see very

00:12:50.460 few if you will classic how-to books very few leadership books like you see in an airport these were

00:12:59.000 really i think very classic books that challenge the reader and deepen the reader and sharpen his or her

00:13:07.560 leadership skills as a result yeah i was surprised too by the number of fiction books on the bookshelf

00:13:13.760 i mean what were some of the examples that were on the the recommendation list well the number one book

00:13:19.280 mentioned by multiple four-star admirals and generals and that that's who we crowdsource this with these are

00:13:27.660 all four-star admirals and generals so by definition people who have led big organizations been highly

00:13:35.280 successful at it and as we found are almost universally very strong readers the number one book mentioned

00:13:42.140 most was a novel killer angels by michael shara which is about the civil war particularly about the battle

00:13:49.560 of gettysburg and what i love about it is that it it shows you that there are so many different kinds

00:13:56.280 of leadership that can be exercised think of the distinction brett between the cerebral almost

00:14:04.120 cosmic robert e lee and the intense impetuosity of pickett leading pickett's charge across that

00:14:11.380 battlefield two totally different leaders but both of them have a style of leadership i think another

00:14:17.840 fantastic novel it's really a set of novels is patrick o'brien's sea novels some of the listeners may

00:14:25.740 have seen the film master and commander with russell crowe and that film is quite good and it's a

00:14:32.600 reflection of the first novel in a series of 20 novels about the napoleonic wars which are just

00:14:39.640 brilliant and then a last novel to mention because it's so different than the other two

00:14:44.220 is a harper lee's classic to kill a mockingbird which of course is about integrity and uh there are

00:14:50.580 other novels on the list but those are three that really leap out at me is what do you think that

00:14:55.400 you can get out of a fiction book you know these lessons on leadership that you can't say from a

00:15:01.380 you know one of those typical leadership books you get at the airport first and foremost in a a work

00:15:07.220 of fiction you get to step into another time and place and and here particularly historical fiction

00:15:15.280 is incredibly powerful pick up stephen pressfield's gates of fire about the battle of thermopoli

00:15:22.000 where the 300 spartans led by leonatus are fighting the persians to pick up that novel is to step into

00:15:30.060 that desperate battle and to to feel with your bones the challenges of leading 300 spartans in what

00:15:39.540 they know will be their last mission they won't come back they know that how do you lead men in that

00:15:46.100 setting or back to to kill a mockingbird putting yourself in the footsteps of atticus finch small

00:15:53.520 town lawyer in the deep south who defends an african-american and and endures all that comes 0.63

00:16:01.040 from doing so so first and foremost with the novel is you get to jump into another time and place secondly

00:16:07.820 brett you can say to yourself well what would i do in that setting it's almost like a simulator of

00:16:14.000 leadership where you can think about how you would deal with the challenges here a good example would

00:16:20.040 be a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court by mark twain where an engineer goes back in time a

00:16:25.220 thousand years by definition he's the smartest person on the planet earth he knows everything

00:16:29.680 because he's got a thousand years of knowledge that he's taken back with him but nobody believes him

00:16:35.180 he's got a leadership challenge so how do you convince that very distant world to come along with you

00:16:42.140 and you put yourself in those positions and then secondly i i think books novels that are historical

00:16:51.520 fiction give you an enormous sense of history which is very helpful to leaders it actually

00:16:56.840 didn't make the top 50 but a book that is often mentioned a series of books are the

00:17:02.080 flashman series by george mcdonald fraser about a british army officer in the 19th century

00:17:09.220 they're highly entertaining but they're also extraordinary little gems of history flashman

00:17:14.860 ends up at the the indian sepoy mutiny he ends up at the charge of the light brigade he's at the

00:17:20.940 battle of little bighorn and these are meticulously researched great deal of history comes out of that so

00:17:27.620 i'd say for those two reasons novels have a unique value that go above and beyond a work of non-fiction

00:17:35.080 yeah i can attest to the historical fiction being a great way to learning history because

00:17:41.220 once it's put in a narrative form like you're more likely to remember it that's how i know about

00:17:46.280 the gettysburg battle of gettysburg is killer angels yeah it's a fabulous book another novel

00:17:51.360 that was very high on our list is called once an eagle by anton myrer and that's a novel about

00:17:57.940 vietnam and to understand vietnam in the psychology of the army in vietnam that novel uh once an eagle

00:18:07.400 is highly highly recommended yeah my father-in-law enjoys that book and he actually just lent me the

00:18:12.880 copy of that and i saw it on the list i'm like all right i got it's a sign i need to read this book

00:18:17.040 now you'll enjoy it so as you said earlier biographies memoirs make up a big portion of the

00:18:22.620 list what were some of the you mentioned ulysses grant his memoirs the best yeah that's a memoir

00:18:28.640 and this is a kind of a tragic personal story so grant has finished up his presidency which was

00:18:34.840 rocked by corruption scandals toward the end and then he contracts throat cancer and he knows that

00:18:41.940 his wife will be destitute because he's been in public service his whole life he's never made any

00:18:46.940 money and despite the whiff of scandal he never profited personally at all and so he was essentially

00:18:54.660 penniless but he was able to secure a contract and so as he's dying of throat cancer he writes these

00:19:01.700 memoirs and they're just gorgeously written they they take you through his life and career and they're

00:19:09.940 deeply deeply deeply personal and i think shaded by the fact that he knows his own end is coming

00:19:17.220 it's a it's a beautiful read and it also is full of lessons for uh how to how to lead truly big

00:19:25.420 organizations and really how to be the president of the united states was there another biography that

00:19:30.240 you saw get recommended over and over again or memoir yeah i think we saw many many recommendations

00:19:36.720 that came in for a book called team of rivals by doris kearns goodwin which is

00:19:44.360 less a memoir it's it's actually a work of history looking at lincoln's cabinet but its powerful

00:19:52.780 story is that of creating uh teams and building teams and in in doing so doris kearns goodwin tells

00:20:02.080 the story of all the senior members of lincoln's cabinet that was just a beautifully realized book

00:20:08.760 about people and leadership are there any military strategy books on the list that you think civilian

00:20:15.060 leaders might get something out of if they read it i i think the classic there is uh the art of war by

00:20:20.980 sun tzu and sun tzu was an ancient philosopher warrior who tells the the story of of how to be

00:20:29.780 in challenging situations and it's not a a book about how to line up military formations the way say

00:20:37.240 closet wits is on war is the art of war is really about being clever the greatest battle you ever win

00:20:45.840 is the one you never actually fight it's about deception it's about causing your enemy to to be off

00:20:53.560 balance i think there are enormous lessons for people in really all walks of life

00:20:59.480 from sun tzu as a as a military writer on war i would not recommend for the common reader that's a

00:21:07.880 classic prussian how to put your war fighting staff together much less of the right kind of things

00:21:16.320 in terms of a a book that has a lot of military but i think transcends that is is a book by sir john

00:21:24.260 keegan called the mask of command which examines different leaders under very stressful circumstances

00:21:31.480 who are going into battle and the lessons that keegan draws out of that i think are very applicable

00:21:38.920 to everything from your family situation you know you're a leader bred in your family so is your wife

00:21:46.540 i'm sure but you you have to also use those lessons across the world of business interestingly in keegan's book

00:21:54.260 he looks at the duke of wellington who won at waterloo he looks at ulysses s grant he looks and

00:22:01.220 this may surprise you but he looks at adolf hitler how is hitler so successful he calls him the false

00:22:07.660 hero but it's a very very competently done book that brings military strategy to uh to the reader in

00:22:15.980 a way that would apply for anybody so you mentioned uh you were pleasantly surprised by the the dearth of

00:22:21.520 leadership you know quote unquote leadership books but did did some make the list and do you think

00:22:25.580 they deserve to be there i do one that i i think is a very good book and and sort of created a almost

00:22:32.660 a cult industry is the seven habits of highly effective people by steve covey and it's a very

00:22:39.540 practical book in in those leadership books i like practical and i think that covey talks about

00:22:47.320 how you build trust how you organize your day how you reward others it's it's a very functional kind

00:22:54.840 of book and that made it and then i i think just a very interesting kind of crossover book is written

00:23:00.920 by an an old-time uh chief staff of the army the leader of the u.s army a guy named gordon sullivan

00:23:07.220 and the book the book has a great title it's hope is not a method what business leaders can learn

00:23:13.580 from america's army and that one i think is a kind of classic leadership book but it's very

00:23:20.960 sensibly written and really picks up this theme that we've talked about here today

00:23:25.180 of what can civilians take away from military style leadership so now most of the leaders as you said

00:23:33.060 the cohort were older because they're four-star generals or admirals right so they're going to be

00:23:37.820 what in their 40s and 50s 60s um probably in their 50s as as four-star officers they'll be in

00:23:43.600 their early to mid 50s typically so uh did you ask any younger officers what they're reading and if so

00:23:49.140 how does it differ from the older officers we we absolutely did and one of the chapters in the book

00:23:54.860 is exactly that it's called what are young leaders reading and you know as you'd expect there are some

00:24:02.260 pretty significant differences between what the uh the more senior leaders read and what younger

00:24:09.920 leaders read and i'll give you a couple examples of books that made the young leaders list that i think

00:24:16.460 probably didn't have a good chance at making the senior list but then i'll tell you some books that

00:24:22.280 were on both lists so memoir as opposed to uh ulysses s grant the memoir that we heard a lot about was

00:24:30.520 by robert gates his book duty he was of course former secretary of defense and director of the cia

00:24:37.560 in terms of history we saw a book by max boot called invisible armies which is about special forces which

00:24:45.400 again is something you would expect from junior officers we saw the new digital age by eric schmidt

00:24:52.300 the head of google we saw thinking fast and slow by daniel kyneman we saw the road to character by

00:25:00.120 david brooks so none of those were on the senior list because you know the senior folks are maybe a

00:25:06.060 little bit less oriented toward that kind of tech world if you will and then on the junior officer

00:25:11.960 list there were some truly quirky outliers a book called infinite jest by david foster wallace

00:25:17.700 atlas shrugged by ann rand i think the secret agent by joseph conrad was on the list let me tell you

00:25:25.560 three books that made both lists and and you mentioned brett that you'd read one of them and

00:25:29.940 it's killer angels was on both lists the battle of gettysburg the book i talked about a minute ago

00:25:35.260 gates of fire was on both lists master and commander about that 19th century sea captain the napoleonic

00:25:42.640 wars was on the list so there were a handful of books that made both lists but as you would expect

00:25:49.360 and you would kind of hope because you hope a new generation is coming along with new ideas

00:25:53.780 the younger leaders had different books and that's the beauty of the leader's bookshelf the book you

00:25:59.500 get it you get a look at both so besides this list of books recommended by military leaders there's

00:26:05.420 there's lots of lists in the military there's like a culture like you said there's this culture of

00:26:08.920 reading and there's also this culture of reading lists in the military why do you think lists are a

00:26:14.720 powerful tool in directing or you know in improving your reading first because they help you organize

00:26:21.240 gives second because it gives you a goal you can say maybe i'm not going to read every book on this

00:26:27.400 list but i'm going to read 10 of the books on this list this year thirdly it's a list that has been

00:26:34.060 curated it's been selected by people who have read a lot fourthly it's probably been crowdsourced just

00:26:40.760 like our book is crowdsourced among senior four-star officers all of those lists are crowdsourced out to

00:26:46.880 groups of people both the junior and senior people and fifth and finally because of the ability to

00:26:54.740 take a title and pop it into google you can read reviews of the book you can read a summary of the

00:27:00.820 book one of the things we include in the leader's bookshelf as you know is a short summary of the book

00:27:06.900 and then we try and extract those leadership lessons from each of the books so i think for all

00:27:13.340 those reasons lists make a lot of sense and then let's face it the military is nothing if not

00:27:18.920 organized we're famous for our checklists if you want to land an airplane in the military you're

00:27:24.260 going to go right down a checklist if you're going to take a submarine and take it down to depth you're

00:27:28.960 going to work off a checklist if you're going to launch a missile you're going to work off a checklist

00:27:32.760 so military people are used to working off lists and i think frankly so are a lot of civilians they're

00:27:38.200 organized and and it's a good way to put structure in reading is there any place people can go to see

00:27:44.540 some of these lists or they just need to google if you google department of defense reading lists you

00:27:50.140 will see many of these pop up and uh i would caution the general listener that many of them are very

00:28:00.060 specific to the command in other words if you look at the chief staff of the army's reading list it's

00:28:06.600 going to be really army heavy same with navy same with air force if you look at the reading list for

00:28:12.600 the commander of u.s southern command which is everything south of the united states i held that

00:28:18.000 position before i was the supreme allied commander over in nato and my reading list there had an awful lot

00:28:23.880 of titles about latin america and the caribbean south america so just be mindful that those reading

00:28:30.140 lists are going to be pretty specialized and that was part of why we wanted to do the leader's bookshelf

00:28:36.120 to generate something that was very broadly based not tied to a particular service or a particular

00:28:42.360 geographic area or a particular time frame but was something that could be very approachable for the

00:28:48.420 general reader so as you put together this this book list and you were organizing your book the leader's

00:28:54.760 bookshelf what were the big leadership lessons that you kept seeing over and over again and all the books

00:29:01.560 that people recommended yeah number one is good leaders are good communicators and you see that again

00:29:09.740 and again in in everyone from an abraham lincoln to ulysses s grant to napoleon to winston

00:29:17.680 churchill good leaders have to be able to communicate and you can pick up a lot of tips on how to do that

00:29:24.300 by reading the books in the reader's bookshelf secondly good leaders build teams we mentioned doris

00:29:29.540 kearns goodwin in the team of rivals good leaders aren't afraid to have very talented people who aren't

00:29:36.020 always in agreement working for them old saying brett is that a quality people hire a quality people

00:29:43.240 b quality people hire c quality people why because they're threatened by those very talented individuals

00:29:51.720 truly great leaders build a teams and here i'd look at the book truman by david mccullough to look at how

00:29:59.620 president truman built his team as well as the book i mentioned earlier about lincoln's cabinet

00:30:05.260 and then thirdly again and again you see that leaders are innovators leaders want to try new

00:30:13.140 things and you see that in the fiction connecticut yankee and king arthur's core that's all about

00:30:18.040 invention and innovation you see it in memoirs dwight eisenhower's crusade in europe how he turned the

00:30:26.160 strategic issues on their head in terms of decisions about where he would take things on

00:30:32.000 ender's game which is a science fiction novel about cyber war it's all about innovation invention and

00:30:39.840 ideas i'd say those three things kept coming back again and again and then in every single book on

00:30:46.820 the list you hit the the need for integrity the need for character again that's why my current book

00:30:53.720 project which will be out uh in 19 in about a year is about character the voyage of character is what i'm

00:31:01.320 calling it and i think every one of these 50 books talks about the need to be truthful to have

00:31:07.420 integrity to be civil the qualities of character that we ought to admire the most and and sadly are

00:31:14.480 not always in evidence in today's leaders i must say well we'll have to have you come back on the show

00:31:19.700 when your new book comes out admiral james this has been a great conversation thank you so much for

00:31:24.820 your time it's been a pleasure been my pleasure brett and happy reading thank you my guest it was admiral

00:31:29.700 james devridis he is the author of the book the leader's bookshelf it's available on amazon.com and

00:31:34.400 bookstores everywhere and if you want to learn more about his book and his work in our show notes with

00:31:38.920 links to all the books that he mentioned head over to our show notes at aom.is slash leaders bookshelf

00:31:44.260 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:32:00.440 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the

00:32:04.060 podcast i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us

00:32:06.920 review on itunes or stitcher it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you so much

00:32:10.680 please consider sharing the show with a friend or two that's how the show grows word of mouth as

00:32:15.120 always thank you for your continued support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:32:19.200 manly

00:32:19.920 manly

The Art of Manliness - January 23, 2018

#373： The Leader's Bookshelf

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