Mattis is a student of Sun Tzu, the philosopher general of ancient China.
There are few books I reread on a regular basis: Art of War (Sun Tzu) and the Book of Five Rings (Miyamoto) are two of them.
Both of these do more than tell you things - the way they are written makes you think for yourself about how to use the ideas.
Every officer in the U.S. military is required to read Sun Tzu, as I recall.
I read him. I still have his little book. It is not all that easy to decipher because of the cultural differences.
bkmk
No person can be a military genius without understanding Sun Tzu. The Leftists have been using his psychology to destroy the USA from within....esp. by emasculating our military, normalizing males who sodomize (dominate) other males and bestiality, and who reject reality and pretend that women are interchangeable with males and there is no difference between males and females (throwing out Reality/Science and Reason).
Machiavelli, a genius, knew that if you promote vice (sodomy) in the military, it will destroy it. It is essential to only promote Virtue in a military, since power will generally corrupt anyhow. (Virtue to Machiavelli was only that perfect reasoned ethic system, established only by Christianity).