BOOK REVIEW: The lure of good and bad leaders
Two new books analyse the styles of high-profile leaders and former US presidents
In summer 1902, a few months into America’s Great Coal Strike, which was to prove one of the defining crises of his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt set out to finish reading a 10-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. “I really believe I have profited,” he wrote to one of its co-authors, singling out a leadership lesson about Lincoln’s character: “To try to be good-natured and forbearing and to free myself from vindictiveness.” Lincoln too was a voracious reader. He overcame his illiterate father’s tendency to destroy the future president’s books and whip him if he was found reading or telling stories to fellow farmworkers. “However dissimilar their upbringings, books became for both Lincoln and Roosevelt ‘the greatest of companions’,” Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in Leadership in Turbulent Times. In Leaders: Myth and Reality, Stanley McChrystal also admits to an intensive reading habit. He devoured history, biography and memoir before, during and after his time as an army cadet at West...
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Subscribe now to unlock this article.
Support BusinessLIVE’s award-winning journalism for R129 per month (digital access only).
There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in SA. Our subscription packages now offer an ad-free experience for readers.
Cancel anytime.
Questions? Email helpdesk@businesslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00. Got a subscription voucher? Redeem it now.