BOOK · 2019
Sailing True North
Ten admirals, from Themistocles to the nuclear age, read as a course in character by NATO's former Supreme Allied Commander.
Ten of history's most consequential naval commanders - Themistocles through the modern era - each read not as a battle history but as a case study in character: what the sea taught them, what command cost them, where they failed themselves. The subtitle is Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character.
Stavridis is a retired four-star admiral who served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe and later dean of the Fletcher School, and he writes as a sailor first - the book's frame is that the long voyage inward is the harder navigation.
The shelf's book about leadership - useful ashore, sharper afloat, where every skipper eventually meets their own weather. Read by Marc Cashman, with Stavridis aboard.