Tag: General

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A Higher Standard: Leadership Strategies from America’s First Female Four-Star General

On June 23, 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Ann Dunwoody as a four-star general in the US Army-the first time a woman had ever achieved that rank. The news generated excitement around the world. Now retired after nearly four decades in the Army, Dunwoody shares what she learned along the way, from her first command leading 100 soldiers to her final assignment, in which she led a 60 billion enterprise of over 69,000 employees, including the Army’s global supply chain in support of Iraq and Afghanistan.

What was the driving force behind Dunwoody’s success? While her talent as a logistician and her empathy in dealing with fellow soldiers helped her rise through the ranks, Dunwoody also realized that true leaders never stop learning, refining, growing, and adapting. In A Higher Standard, Dunwoody details her evolution as a soldier and reveals the core leadership principles that helped her achieve her historic appointment. Dunwoody’s strategies are applicable to any leader, no matter the size or scope of the organization. They include lessons such as “Never Walk by a Mistake,” a mandate to recognize when something is wrong, big or small, and to hold people accountable. Not only can this save billions for industry, it can
sometimes save the lives of soldiers and citizens. She also advises that “Leaders Aren’t Invincible-Don’t Try to Be”: to be our best, we have to acknowledge our worst. And she encourages readers to “Leverage the Power of Diversity” by creating teams of people from different backgrounds to provide a broad range of ideas and devise the best-informed decisions.

With these and other guiding principles, A Higher Standard offers practical, tactical advice that everyone can use to lead and achieve with maximum success.

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African Kaiser: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918

The incredible true account of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and his exploits in World War I Africa with the legendary “Schutztruppe”.

As World War I ravaged the European continent, a completely different theater of war was being contested in Africa. And from this very different kind of war, there emerged a very different kind of military leader….

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the continent of Africa was a hotbed of international trade, colonialism, and political gamesmanship. So when World War I broke out, the European powers were forced to contend with each other not just in the bloody trenches – but in the treacherous jungle. And it was in that unforgiving land that General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck would make history.

With the now legendary “Schutztruppe” (Defensive Force), von Lettow-Vorbeck and a small cadre of hardened German officers fought alongside their fanatically devoted native African allies as equals, creating the first truly integrated army of the modern age.

African Kaiser is the almost-forgotten true account of Wiemar Germany’s military escapades on the dark continent. A story of 1,000-mile marches through the harshest landscapes; of German officers riding bicycles into battle through the bush; of battleships hidden in jungle rivers teeming with crocodiles; of improbable Zeppelin voyages; of desperate men living off hippo lard and facing dangers in both man and nature. But mostly it is the story of von Lettow-Vorbeck – the only undefeated German commmander in the field during World War I, and the last to surrender his arms in final defeat.

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Santa Anna: The Life and Legacy of the Legendary Mexican President and General

The butcher of the Alamo and Goliad. The traitor who sold half of Mexico. The Napoleon of the West. Mr. Fifteen Nails. The Mother Country’s seducer. Almost 150 years after his death, a lot of name-calling is still being directed towards Antonio López de Santa Anna, president of Mexico 11 times in the 19th century, and today, the vast majority of his compatriots consider him the greatest traitor in history. It was not like that in his day; actually, there had never been a more popular man in Mexico, or anyone more eulogized and essential than General Santa Anna. In life he was the most famous – and at intervals most infamous – Mexican general and politician. Justo Sierra, the eminent writer and historian who watched him when he was a child, wrote that the masses came to regard him as a Messiah: “The people had a vague confidence that he could do miracles.” Sierra wrote that Santa Anna was “the indispensable man, the man for our times of crisis, our deus ex machina.” The political factions that rose against him and sent him into exile a couple of years later were knocking at his door begging him to come back when the nation was coming apart at its seams. Then Santa Anna returned to Mexico, and he seduced her, united the people, and formed armies out of thin air to fight the new threats to the motherland: Spain, France, and the United States.

At the same time, just as there are men who embody all the nation’s virtues – like Benito Juárez in Mexico or Abraham Lincoln in the United States – the Mexicans have, according to their official history, a villain by decree, guilty of all the evils except maybe the earthquakes. The most serious accusation is that Santa Anna let go half of Mexico’s territory to the United States. “Me? Selling half of Mexico?” says the General in Enrique Serna’s brilliant novel, The Mother Country’s Seducer. “For Christ’s sake! When will these childish Mexicans learn that if this ship sank, it was not the helmsman’s fault only, but the laziness and ineptitude of the oarsmen? Like all human beings, I have committed mistakes, and some had dire consequences. But from there to the monstrosity they want to blame me for, there is an abyss.”

The general was not a man of much learning, but he knew how to use the sentiment of the time, which is merely a way of saying that he was a skillful adventurer. He had the air for the office and loved all forms of display. More often than not he fell in disgrace, suffered the ingratitude of his people, and only by sheer luck was saved several times from being shot. His fortune always was, as so eloquently put in the 13th century poem Carmina Burana, changeable like the moon.

Santa Anna deserves a more objective judgment than that of official history. For his sins, he certainly paid, in part by living long past his time. It certainly would have been better for his reputation if he had gone sooner. But either way, his life story is more interesting than all but a select few, and it includes a little bit of everything, including glory, tragedy, intrigue, love, exile, and oblivion. Santa Anna: The Life and Legacy of the Legendary Mexican President and General looks at one of Mexico’s most important figures.

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Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General

Readers around the world have thrilled to Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, and Killing Jesus—riveting works of nonfiction that journey into the heart of the most famous murders in history. Now from Bill O’Reilly, anchor of The O’Reilly Factor, comes the most epic book of all in this multimillion-selling series: Killing Patton. General George S. Patton, Jr. died under mysterious circumstances in the months following the end of World War II. For almost seventy years, there has been suspicion that his death was not an accident—and may very well have been an act of assassination. Killing Patton takes readers inside the final year of the war and recounts the events surrounding Patton’s tragic demise, naming names of the many powerful individuals who wanted him silenced.