Career War

In Flying in the Face of Fear: Lessons on Leading with Courage, former fighter pilot and retired Air Force Colonel Kim Campbell delivers an inspiring and practical discussion of leadership and decision-making. In the book, you'll follow the author's journey through the principles that got her through her twenty-four-year career in the high-stakes and high-risk world of aerial combat.

At the core of this classic treatise is the message that sledgehammer approaches can backfire, and size alone does not guarantee wins. Strategy, positioning, planning, leadership - all play equally significant roles, making Sun Tzu's teachings perfect for small business owners and entrepreneurs entrenched in fierce competition for customers, market share, talent - for their very survival.

For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.

The title “Bullfrog” is given to the Navy SEAL who has served the longest on active duty. Admiral McRaven was honored to receive this honor in 2011 when he took charge of the United States Special Operations Command. When McRaven retired in 2014, he had 37 years as a Navy SEAL under his belt, leading men and women at every level of the special operations community. During those four decades, Admiral McRaven dealt with every conceivable leadership challenge. The Wisdom of The Bullfrog draws on these and countless other experiences from Admiral McRaven’s incredible life.

The training to become a fighter pilot is among the most competitive and difficult in the world with less than one-in-a-thousand succeeding. Pushing a cutting-edge jet to its limits at over 1,000 mph means that every split-second decision can have catastrophic consequences. This extreme environment has forged a group of warriors who for the last 50 years have been considered at the apex of decision-making theory and practice. In The Art of Clear Thinking Hasard Lee distills what he’s learned during his career flying some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft.

First published in 1991, Backlash made headlines and became a best-selling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decade-long antifeminist backlash against women’s advances. As Faludi writes in a new preface for this edition, much has changed in the intervening years. This startling and essential book helps explain why women’s freedoms are still so demonized and threatened - and urges us to choose a different future.

In this illuminating memoir, McChrystal frankly explores the major episodes and controversies of his eventful career. He delves candidly into the intersection of history, leadership, and his own experience to produce a book of enduring value. Joining the troubled post-Vietnam army as a young officer, McChrystal witnessed and participated in some of our military’s most difficult struggles. He describes the many outstanding leaders he served with and the handful of bad leaders he learned not to emulate.

The business-IT wall must come down. Mark brings his unique perspective and experience to business leaders looking to lead their company into the digital age by harnessing the expertise and innovation that is already under their roof: IT. For business leaders looking to unlock their enterprise's digital transformation, War and Peace and IT provides clear context and strategies. Schwartz demystifies the role IT plays in the modern enterprise, allowing business leaders to create new strategies for the new digital battleground.

No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership. In First Man In, he shares the core lessons he’s learned over the course of his fascinating, exhilarating life. Special forces training is no walk in the park. The rules are strict, and they make sure you learn the hard way, pushing you beyond the limits of what is physically possible. There is no mercy. Even when you are bleeding and broken, to admit defeat is failure.

The Art of War will teach you to conquer your opponents and gain a loyal following. It is one of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. It is the first and one of the most successful works on strategy and has had a huge influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu was the first to recognize the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment.

Physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs. Drawing on the science of phase transitions, Bahcall reveals why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them.

A leadership book by former Navy SEAL and New York Times best-selling author Mark Divine, Staring Down the Wolf focuses on harnessing the principles of purpose and discipline in life to achieve success. What does it take to command a team of elite individuals? It requires a commitment to seven key principles: Courage, Trust, Respect, Growth, Excellence, Resiliency, and Alignment. All of these are present in an elite team which commits to them deeply in order to forge the character worthy of uncommon success.

This is not a straightforward memoir. Instead, it is a book that distills the processes and tactics Anthony 'Staz' Stazicker gathered throughout his career in the Special Forces—gunfights, door-kicking operations, and against-the-odds escape—and how these hard lessons informed his later successes with multi-million pound start-up clothing company ThruDark.

Based on the chart-topping Business Wars podcast, stories, and lessons from history’s greatest business rivalries, interspersed with audio clips from the podcast. Using Chinese military genius Sun Tzu’s strategies as a guide, Brown examines why some companies triumph while others crumble....

Organizations need an enduring specialist architecture that enables the entire organization to work with and talk about people matters in a consistent way. This architecture needs to set common standards for both performance potential and development, differentiated by different levels of specialists. It should also establish language and processes to address issues, identify problems, and exploit opportunities effectively, as well as data for making decisions about everything from job transition to performance.

In 2012, on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, an improvised explosive device left Dan Crenshaw's right eye destroyed and his left blinded. Only through the careful hand of his surgeons, and what doctors called a miracle, did Crenshaw's left eye recover partial vision. And yet, he persevered, completing two more deployments. Why? There are certain stories we tell ourselves about the hardships we face—we can become paralyzed by adversity or we can adapt and overcome. We can be fragile or we can find our fortitude. Crenshaw delivers a set of lessons to help you do just that.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) was one of the most important documents to come out of World War I – specifically the period of the Armistice and the subsequent settlement negotiations. And, a century on, it remains of particular relevance to our times – an uncompromising and forthright analysis of how international diplomacy can be suffused by personalities, prejudices, personal ambition and outright, uncontrolled feelings of revenge.

Deliberate Discomfort follows the journey of Jason Van Camp as a new Green Beret commander taking over a team of combat-hardened Special Forces veterans. This true story tells firsthand the intense, traumatic battles these warriors fought and won, sharing lessons learned from their incredible backgrounds. A cadre of scientists further break down each experience, translating them into digestible and relatable action items, allowing the listener to apply these lessons forged under fire to their own lives.

Navy Ace pilot and TOPGUN instructor Bill Driscoll demonstrates how his own life-or-death aerial dogfights - and the preparation for them - can help guide high-risk corporate decisions. Interviews with over 200 senior executives and 26 Ace pilots, as well as strategies from Driscoll's own highly successful second career in commercial real estate, reinforce the consistent patterns underlying exceptional performance under pressure.

Hal Moore led his life by a set of principles - a code developed through years of experience, trial-and-error, and the study of leaders of every stripe. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Moore's life touched upon many historical events: the Occupation of Japan, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the refashioning of the US Army into an all-volunteer force. At each juncture, he learned critical lessons and had opportunities to affect change through measured responses.