i just want to say if you want to get more of leslie she will be on a panel later this evening and she will be part of the panel, what my mother and i do not talk about. that is at nine clock tonight in the community room. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] >> will be back with more live coverage at the wisconsin book festival in about a half an hour that will be megan felt on her reactions on twitter cost her to leave the westboro baptist church which is known for protestant soldier funerals and gay marriage. >> while we wait we want to show you part of a program that airs tomorrow evening. here is jim mattis on his military career and his thoughts on leadership.

>> one passage in here we see the commitment to excellence is uncompromised and personal sensitivity is irrelevant if when there's a mistake. >> when i read that i thought the last 60 years just kumble. because in most workplaces and most schools personal sensitivity is not making people feel bad, is a high priority do think that comes as he extends of excellence? >> it is a good point, the fact is on the battlefield there is no trophy for second place much less ninth place. you have got to win. so you're brought up with a very grim set of skills by people who have been there, done it and they are not really interested in reasons white cannot happen. you have simply got to carry through but pretty soon what

carries you along, you know everybody beside you is also going to be there and when trouble looms they will come even at the risk of their life. it is humbling but interesting. you are now part of something bigger than yourself and i think that is really what expands you. it does not shrink you to be part of an organization, it expands you to have a sense. >> earlier you are doing running recruitment in home area and it sounds like you're working 80 hour weeks or some long amount there is an officer that did not want to do that who challenged you and maybe had a family or something. and you busted him and ended his career. what about worklife balance? >> there is a worklife balance but it has to be everybody is doing everything that they can so you don't dump more of the work on someone else. in this case i made it clear to the young man that you can be a

marine or quarter but you cannot be both. so i'm not good to care more about your career and you care. you tell me what you want to be. if you want to be a marine all coach you and be with you all the way through. and he decided to test it and the thing i remember especially with the number of students who are here tonight with account factor, david and i before i walked out. you always want to help people but i will not even waste my time as your coach and that's what i did about 95% of my time in the marines. i was a coach. but i will not waste my time coaching 70 who is not humble. it is worthless. you might as will give it up. if they are not humble to recognize the need coaching and if i am not that humble then you cannot help them.

in any organization as you become a leader, you don't get to be a leader because you have a rank on your caller or title on your business card, your juniors determine if your leader. they will vote whether or not you are leader. in the battlefield they'll follow the pfc if the 28 euro captain doesn't know what he's doing. just remember, at times even jesus another had one out of 12 go to crop on him. [laughter] you have to maintain a firing squad. >> i missed that part of the gospel. >> let us go to coaching. did you have somebody who said that was a guy who made me who i am. >> who are my mentors. on this tour the hope point was

to pass on lessons on what worked for me too consider not to follow blindly. does this make sense to you and when you're in the infantry, your fortunes rise or fall on the ncos. you are living out there with 40 sailors and marines you're in the mud and you have no better living condition india the last officer in the chain of commands and you must represent all the orders that come down to those in our line of work going to the alternate killing zone. in my first sgt was in the british indies in the caribbean and his name is wayne johnson and senior enlisted guy at a 40 sailors and marines and is only 21 years old. and of course with a name like wayne johnson everybody called him john wayne.

and then he was overseas for a long time and he taught me not just what he did but what not to do. what an officer does not do. leave that alone and let other people handle certain things. i'm starting to learn that delegating decision-making and responsibility. my second platoon sergeant was manuel rivera. this is 1973 timeframe. he was in a group from mexico. he was the same way, stern and yet he was a guy who could get down there and show a marine who was having trouble how to do something right. i used to admire in a few sharp words in turn the person in the right direction mostly spiritually, the physical and the mental follow. in my third, i finally got a staff sergeant with 15 years in the marine corps, he is from

québec, i was also learning about the immigrant role in the u.s. military and how they were overrepresented in it was a broadening experience because somehow growing up in my hometown 99% of the people i was with were native born. why do i bring it up, the military by its nature will expand you in a way no other organization will and diversity. the mentors come in all shapes and sizes and they come from all parts of the world. >> one of the things in the book, your affection for the ring, there are times when you're leading any unit you have to be unpopular. so were you close friends with the people around you or was the distance between you and those under your command?

>> i was taught this, i'm used to encouraging officers to come as close to the line that separates them from the troop as they can. and be themselves without giving up 1 ounce of authority because there is going to come a time when the chips are down and you will have to point to someone and point toward the enemy and tell them to go. at that point, everything in that young man's body will say don't get up, don't move against them you know what can happen. and you're going to need that authority. but to use and very critical word, it took me 25 years to come to the word deception. you need trust and respect. trust is the point of the round. if you don't have that as a leader then you probably aren't going to accomplish much of anything. i knew that the troops respected their leaders, marine corps anywhere from 40 - 60% of the already screen people who try to

become officers. why were some units so good why were some 40 mental tunes as good as 150 men infantry company when they clued at the nab. it took me a long time to figure out, the other word was affection. in four months around me is a two star at 29 sailors and marines in four months, 17 of the 29 were killed or wounded around me. when casualties get around 50% that's in the sunni triangle. day and day out. what held them together was an affection for each other that no matter what happened they would keep fighting and fighting and fighting. in the affection is opposite in its own way of popularity. populating brings favoritism. it's one of the reasons why

you'll see the military so anti-anything that will bring other impulses inside combat assault units. when you're pointing to someone and sending them forward and you can read in very old textbooks about when favoritism routed a unit from out of a king. so the point is affection those not rest on any sort of favoritism. not about being popular when you go around and make people get up and move and they don't want to and telling people the first thing you have to do is jump into a mud puddle because you don't want them to be reluctant to hit the deck in the mud and they get shot at. you're not doing things that make you popular.

but you find if you been honest with your troops and if they trust you then they will stick with you. for example, deep inside the city that we watched boys taken halfway through and we know we have the enemy on the run and were halted and told to pull out. in a television camera gets shoved in a light machine in the filthy dirty marine is that his machine gun over shoulders are coming out and the reporter says this is terrible, you must feel terrible, that's terrible you lost your buddies, now you're being told to pull. >> you must feel terrible. he's a folk talking kid from down south. he looks over at the camera and says dump them somewhere else and kill him. it's good that these young folks who sign up in the blank check payable to all of you in this room to protect this experiment we call america but i would also tell you if we had not been honest and kept him informed, if he did not trust us he could

have said yeah, it's terrible. and when morale goes down in a combat unit, you know he will lose more people is affection that build on the trust and respect but not popularity. >> there is a grand study which study men who graduated from college in 1940 and they got drafted in world war ii and some became colonels and majors and some privates. they want to know what correlates the success and worker. the men who had received a lot from the moms new how to give it to their men. so were a deep emotional reservoir. you mentioned falluja. this was an unpleasant moment with a lot of unpleasant moment and you were given orders and as i remember you did not like

being told to take any and didn't like to stop when you were told to take any. how did you march your men and women during operation but you think is a mistake? >> to explain a little background to all of you. we were in a place, the enemy was rising up of what would become known as the sunni uprising against us guiding and he had plenty of help. and we were outnumbered there. we were under troop caps so we cannot bring additional troops even though they were waiting in southern california to bring them in. shortly after we took over the district from the 82nd airborne division for contractors, while on the battlefield was very upset about this sort of stuff wandered into a town called falluja and they got killed, and their bodies hung up and people very angry in

this town. it was a tribal town so what we did is we knew we would get hold of the tribal town and find where the bodies were and get the bodies back and find the people who done it and hunt them down and kill them. but i want to do it with rage into their homes at night and that sort of thing. i did not want to charge intercity of 350,000 people. after a couple days of arguing. i knew that my boss and the boss about him and that's what it's called orders, it's not called likes. so i said let's do it. and then what you have to do, you have to do this as well as embracing because if you go into

something like that halfway then people are going to suffer. so i only had to assault at the time, many innocent people evacuated as could over 300,000 and we went in swinging and i would just tell you the one qualification i put on it is i am going but do not stop me. and deep inside the city the enemy is very effective information worker photos, filming footage of artillery rounds crushing into falluja and we never fired one art delivery round and the first bottle of falluja. i would add if we needed it, the helicopter gunships and the tanks were given what we needed we did not fire. but it was played as if we were doing the on bbc and other networks in this town and footage with guys who bring

stuff into them. we got stopped deep inside the city with hand grenades and we were losing people. then we got ordered to pull back and that's when the young machine gun was asked about it. you have to do the best you can because sometimes life does not go the way you wanted to go. so you give it 100%. >> how do you command a bottle like that, i spoken to people in the bottle and they were busting their walls. >> how do you command? >> first of all you have to make sure you laid out very clearly what you want. so the commander intent is what it's called, my aim is to destroy the terrorist stronghold in seclusion at the least cost of the innocent as possible and i want to move quickly with the two assaults i tongue battalions but you must move fast enough because i cannot reach supply. we knew they were not ready for the bottom. then what you do, you go around

and talk to the assault unit, right down and pulled together in small groups and explain it. then you have to ask me questions. you go back and forth and if you could draw out what was really concerning inside then you would have a unit ready to go and that's the leader's job. once you made that clear if you train your people and they were very well trained of the assault unit and you take your hands off the steering will give the initiative and if you trust your young ncos and officers, and they keep the social energy going into the unit and calling for the support and the young ncos are doing their job, they will blowhole's in the sides so they don't have to go in the front gate in the way that is booby-trapped. they know what they're doing.

but if you get into a place that you want to control, we don't call it command and control, how many have you heard of that word. marines will lead command and feedback. we told you what we need done now you will see me on the front line listening talking to the wooded marines what happened, how did happen. and you get feedback from 100 different directions. take your hands off the wheel after you state what needs to be done. >> and as they prepare for battle and huddled in by their shields and they were so terrified you can hear their teeth chattering. have you felt the fear in the course of your career in the battlefield or summerhouse? >> absolutely. you feel it, you're trained to overcome it in there is things you could do to overcome it in your body and your mind will help you get through that.

it will slow some things down. but the most apart -- there is nothing strange about fear, it is going to be there. it's a part of every fight. the first time i got shot i could not taste for three days, it scared the hell out of me. i think you are well enough trained but will really dirty forward internet or drives you forward, i cannot explain how tired you get in. so the fear is going to be coupled with fatigue that goes beyond words. there is going to be a sense of doom and exhilaration going back and forth moment by moment in the adrenaline is pumping and pretty soon you are pretty tired out and anyone can get tired

enough that it just does not work. what keeps you going really is the affection, love for one another that i don't care what happened. the muscle memory kicks in and the marines are real good at socializing people to the level of commitment when they come in. so you go into a fight with a lot of confidence. >> after that battle -- you went to fort leavenworth and wrote a book. that you and others -- >> or was it like, this is a revolutionary document and what was it like writing a book back at home where the marines were

fighting in iraq, was that part of the rotation and what was the process behind that. it really did revolutionize. >> it took advantage of the lessons learned but this is the normal behavior of a learning organization if the organization is learning you bring some your people back and we were old friends and we serve together as regular generals and that was to start and for leavenworth. so we just decided we had to write something and we said okay let's map out the chapters in our staff did it and we said the army these chapters in the marines these chapters and we meet like the senate and house of representatives. [laughter] >> that works so well. >> we could give them a lesson. we turned around the book very quickly. in the most important thing was something called design. go back to einstein and confronting the problem of how to save the earth, how would he compose his thinking and allegedly he said if he was given one hour to save the world

he said i would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and save the world in five minutes. the marines got to define the problem chapter in the campaign design chapter but for all of you as you go into these issues whether incorporation or school districts in your local community, whether your at, take the time to define the problem as satisfaction. don't go charging into a war and then pull the statue down and say now what do we do. that is not a good idea. so we put the book out, we think we learned a lot while we were there, david and i and we put it out and changed the training, the doctrine, the weapons, the uniforms and mostly the cultural aspect of the services going in and once we got enough people on the ground we turned it around. >> one of my favorite sections

of your book is told we need to be helping the invasion of iraq and you read other books about that in my favorite passage of the book is if you have not read hundreds of books are functionally illiterate which is true to politics and prose. [laughter] >> you found time to read every day of your career. >> the marine corps expected it. the marine corps does not mind if you make mistakes, i made a lot of mistakes, i got chewed out in the marine corps and they do not look out for your ego or anything when they go after you. but they promoted me every time i made a mistake. they promoted me every time in the marine corps made it clear that they were not -- they expected me too study but did not expect me too make mistakes. because you will all be leaders of something if you want to be,

that is your choice, that's the opportunity you will have in all leaders of rings in society and make sure you know the difference between a mistake for the lack of discipline. in the naval service, marines we used to say if you run the ships on the rocks you will get humor. this is diversity and you're going down and if your senior you're probably going out, if you're young you get a second chance. but a mistake, human beings make mistakes, i made a lot of mistakes. let me tell you the grade mistakes are made. in the middle of the open desert i commend 1250 sailors, marines and arabs in my battalion and we were going through a middle of an open desert and i get surrounded, that is almost impossible. [laughter] i was at the top of my game but the wrong game.

and as i went into this and you know when your mortars guys are sitting up for shooting this way and for shooting that way. you are not brilliant. later on i saw the marines got me out of that mess and always walking around saying -- i got called over to the headquarters because they told us we had to break through the quaint city tonight because they're murdering innocent people in the iraqi army is correct retreating in front of us and they said you have to get there and you have to stop them. it was getting late, it was going to be difficult when we got done and moving back to our unit insane here are the orders, let's go. andy called over and said, did

you learn something today and i said yesterday. he said okay. and did not have to rub it in, he wanted to make sure that he knew that he solid and wanted to make sure it was a big deal but he did not make a big deal of it. he thought that's enough in knowing and going to another attack and i don't need song and dance about tactic. i learned a lesson. so i think if you can help people get their mistakes and use them as learning opportunities, it does not in any way except lack of discipline. but for crying out loud let's not have a no mistake world. i feel twice before i went in to the marines. and i will tell you, the marines forgive that too. [laughter] when you make a mistake or decision that's not a mistake and there are losses, do you torture yourself about it or i

learned a lesson now move on. >> you do not forget when your lads leave their ligh lose their what you did. and you have to live with it. >> you can watch the entire program with damon matus tomorrow at 5:50 p.m. eastern and a reminder that the full schedule for this weekend is available a booktv.org or in your program guide. >> here is a look at some of the events booktv will cover this week. on monday look for us at the massachusetts historical society in boston or harvard university professor beth cowans will look at american urban policy post-world war ii. to the work of urban planner. then on thursday will be in austin, texas. for historian h.w. brands recount of the settling of the american west. on thursday at barnes & noble in

new york city journalists pamela will argue that workplace initiatives have largely failed. on friday will be on the west coast at roman's bookstore in pasadena, california for the talk on the 1965 debate between james baldwin over the civil rights movement. all of these events are open to the public and if you're an attendant take a picture and target booktv on twitter, facebook or instagram. here are some of the current best-selling nonfiction books. according to the bookstore in madison wisconsin. topping the list is the schizophrenia's and essays on mental illness. then american singer-songwriter recounts her life and career in horror story. followed by netflix clear i cast

member over the top. in the book of gutsy women hillary and chelsea clinton sure thoughts on the women who inspired them. in one of the best selling nonfiction books according to madison wisconsin in the bookstore care westover the count of growing up in idaho mounds in the introduction to formal education at the age of 17 in her book educated. it's been on the bestseller list for nearly two years. some appeared on the tv and you can watch them online booktv.org. spew get unturned. >> beginning life is megan who discusses growing up as a westborough baptist church in her decision to leave. you are watching book to be live coverage of the wisconsin book festival. >> hello my name is connor i'm

the director of the wisconsin book festival. they can wall so much for being here tonight. i believe this is seven of eight events in this room and also the 30th out of the 32 event just today and the third day of the wisconsin book festival. thank you so much. i could not be more pleased to introduce you to megan overbrook unfollow. we were just talking about her discussion of doubt, how you decide to leave or stay in how you defend yourself in one of those conversations that we need to be having so much more as a culture and i think it opens up so many doors for people. . . .