With rifle and bibliography: General Mattis on professional reading
Published on: May 7, 2013
By Jill R. Russell
Message 1: from General James Mattis, on the matter of professional reading, 20 November 2003
….The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way.
By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work
where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.
Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed
(successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.
