Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

by Jim Mattis, Bing West

Overview

#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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812996838
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	10,494
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jim Mattis is a Pacific Northwest native who served more than four decades as a Marine infantry officer. Following two years as the Secretary of Defense, he returned to the Northwest and is now the Davies Family Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Bing West has written eleven books, including, with Jim Mattis, the #1 New York Times bestseller Call Sign Chaos. He served as a Marine grunt in Vietnam and later as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. He has been on hundreds of patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan, including many operations with General Mattis. He is a member of the Military History Working Group at the Hoover Institution. He lives with his wife, Betsy, in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Newport, Rhode Island.

Table of Contents

Prologue ix

Part I Direct Leadership

Chapter 1 A Carefree Youth Joins the Disciplined Marines 3

Chapter 2 Recruit for Attitude, Train for Skill 15

Chapter 3 Battle 20

Chapter 4 Broadening 39

Chapter 5 Rhino 50

Part II Executive Leadership

Chapter 6 The March Up 79

Chapter 7 A Division In Its Prime 103

Chapter 8 Incoherence 115

Chapter 9 Cascading Consequences 137

Chapter 10 Fighting While Transforming 148

Chapter 11 Hold the Line 158

Chapter 12 Essential NATO 169

Chapter 13 Disbanding Bureaucracy 178

Part III Strategic Leadership

Chapter 14 Central Command: The Trigonometry Level of Warfare 189

Chapter 15 Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory 205

Chapter 16 Friend or Foe 221

Chapter 17 Reflections 235

Epilogue: America as Its Own Ally 248

Appendix A My Letter to General Robert Johnston, October 1991 251

Appendix B Jim Mattis on Reading 256

Appendix C Correspondence Between General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral William Halsey, 1943 260

Appendix D To the Families of Our Sailors and Marines Deploying to the Middle East, February 2004 262

Appendix E My Dismissal of Charges Letter for Haditha Incident, August 2007 263

Appendix F President George W. Bush's Assignment Letter for NATO Supreme Command, September 2007 266

Appendix G My USJFCOM Commander's Guidance for Effects Based Operations, August 2008 267

Acknowledgments 269

Notes 273

Index 285

Editorial Reviews

09/30/2019

Former defense secretary Mattis surveys his four decades in the U.S. Marine Corps in this sturdy memoir and leadership guide co-written with combat veteran West (One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War). At the outset, Mattis lets readers know that he doesn’t discuss “sitting Presidents” and won’t be “tak up the hot political rhetoric of the day.” Instead, he recounts, among other highlights from his military career, watching his battalion turn the tables on an Iraqi ambush during the 1990 Gulf War; leading the 1st Marine Division into the Battle of Fallujah in 2004; and taking over for Gen. David Petraeus at U.S. Central Command in 2010. Mattis’s leadership lessons border on the banal—his early years in the Marines taught him the importance of “competence, caring, and conviction”—but his blunt assessments of U.S. foreign policy can be memorable. Of the Obama administration’s refusal to listen to his concerns about Iraqi prime minister Nour al-Maliki, Mattis writes, “It was like talking to people who lived in wooden houses but saw no need for a fire department.” Meanwhile, he lets his resignation letter serve as his only direct comment on serving in President Trump’s Cabinet. This judicious book burnishes Mattis’s legacy at the same time it belies his “Mad Dog” reputation. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-09-05
The former secretary of defense delivers lessons for would-be leaders.

The title might describe the current White House, from which Mattis (co-editor: Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military, 2016) departed after disagreeing on one issue too many with the sitting president. However, it derives from an ironic Marine Corps acronym. Mattis spotted trouble from the start, noting that, after all, the separation of military from civilian leadership, by which officers were forbidden from serving in the office "within seven years of departing military service," is there for a good reason—a reason disregarded by Trump and company. Still, Mattis, writing with Bing (One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War, 2014, etc.), has relatively little to say about his time in that orbit. Instead, he focuses on his military career, during which he rose through the ranks and replaced Gen. David Petraeus as head of the U.S. Central Command; and on the leadership lessons he learned in the field and on base. Considered an intellectual, he insists foremost on lifelong learning and constant reading: When he was called on to lead the 1st Marine Division in the Iraq War, for instance, he devoured books, from T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom ("few Westerners in recent history had achieved his level of trust with Arabs on the battlefield") to memoirs and studies of William Tecumseh Sherman, Gertrude Bell, and Alexander the Great. "I may not have come up with many new ideas," writes Mattis, "but I've adopted or integrated a lot from others," and he insisted that his officers and enlisted personnel read and study. Some lessons are obvious (don't play favorites), some gung-ho (show an "obvious bias for action"), and most eminently useful for leaders in whatever sector ("You must decide, act, and move on"). One wishes for a little more dirt, but the author, a cool-headed diplomat, seems to be reserving that for magazine interviews, dishing it judiciously.

Meatier and more substantive than books like The 48 Laws of Power and a font of well-considered guidance.

Kirkus Reviews

Advance praise for Call Sign Chaos
 
“Combining simplicity and thoughtfulness, Jim Mattis has produced a classic account of a lifetime of service. Call Sign Chaos is a lesson in leadership and an evocation of humanity in the cause of peace.”—Henry Kissinger
 
“In this magnificent memoir, Jim Mattis details many important events in his career, but he also does much more: He explains how he is informed by his experiences in a way that teaches you how to learn from your own. Read, enjoy, and learn.”—George Shultz

“A portrait of Mattis’s life-defining love for the Marine Corps . . .His prose sings.”—David Brooks, The New York Times
 
“A riveting read . . . General Mattis has had a lot of fine hours, but this could be his finest.”—The New York Sun

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