Lessons on leadership that check all the boxes.
A leadership guide from the founding director of the Harvard Center for Public Leadership.
Gergen, a CNN analyst and former White House adviser to four presidents, has read everything on the subject, so this is as much a review of the literature as a survey of his personal advice, but there is a great deal of overlap. In three sections, the author describes the qualities of a leader, how a leader deals with others, and examples of leaders in action. Gergen fills his text with real-world examples, most of them involving largely well-respected public figures—Churchill’s name appears 76 times, Lincoln’s 50, Stalin’s 0. Donald Trump also appears (33 times) but only as a cautionary tale. Few readers will deny that leadership starts from within, and Gergen’s lessons on self-mastery ring true despite a steady stream of bromides—e.g., “stay true to your values and principles”; “discover your true inner voice.” Readers who have digested multiple leadership guides will encounter few surprises but will not quarrel with the author’s emphasis on finding a good role model, building a solid team, learning to speak in public, and determining when the “low arts” are preferable to honesty. Particularly insightful is Gergen’s analysis of how effective leaders are able to manage across a hierarchy, including colleagues, superiors, and those who report directly to them. Throughout, the author’s definition of leader is broad and encompassing. Though they didn’t necessarily command others, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was brilliant and inspiring, Rachel Carson was a devastatingly effective writer, and climate activist Greta Thunberg is charismatic and persuasive. The text also makes it clear that while leadership is teachable, pure talent is not. Like many other guidebooks, Gergen closes with key takeaways that vary from useful (“try hard things, fail, move on”) to questionable (“give 150 percent of yourself”).
Lessons on leadership that check all the boxes.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982170-57-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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