A plea for the importance of history in the study of leadership.
A professor of leadership and history reflects on influential political leaders.
Temkin, a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and author of The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair, asks whether leaders make history or the historical moment makes the leader. The answer is both. To argue his case, the author looks at leaders under different conditions: in times of crisis (Herbert Hoover, Huey Long, and Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression); under tyranny (the French resistance during the Vichy regime); when past decisions severely constrain present choices (the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki); when leadership fails (Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War); and under colonial and authoritarian regimes (Algeria’s war for independence). Temkin casts suffragist movement leaders Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul as successes in the face of entrenched power, and he uses Martin Luther King Jr. to illustrate the claim that a leader has to leave a legacy. Although the author excels at providing historical context, he offers little about the “the art of leadership.” His focus is the consequences of leadership—good leaders “do not even need to be warriors, rebels, or saints. In our current condition, it may be enough that they simply want to help the public”—and not how leaders achieve their goals. That Temkin’s interest is confined to the politically famous—leaving aside university presidents, corporate heads, labor leaders, and directors of charitable organizations—further limits his perspective. The book’s title is also problematic. The author is never explicit about why the categories of fighting for a noble cause, overcoming oppression, and sacrificing oneself to the greater good are helpful for distinguishing among leaders and understanding leadership. In fact, he attests that the “best” leaders are all three—e.g., the suffragists were “committed warriors,” “determined rebels,” and “reluctant saints.”
A plea for the importance of history in the study of leadership.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781541758476
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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