Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness

Walter Isaacson

Oct 2010 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Nicholas Hormann

About this audiobook

The best historians in the land consider examples of great leadership, well known and surprising, from Washington to Willkie and more.

What made FDR a more successful leader during the Depression crisis than Hoover? Why was Eisenhower more effective as supreme commander during World War II than he was as president? Why was Grant one of the best presidents of his day, if not in all of American history? What drove Bobby Kennedy into the scrum of electoral politics? Who was Pauli Murray and why was she one of the most decisive figures in the movement for civil rights?

Find the surprising and revelatory answers to these questions and more in this collection of new essays by great historians, including Sean Wilentz, Alan Brinkley, Annette Gordon-Reed, Jean Strouse, Robert Dallek, Frances FitzGerald, and others. Entertaining and insightful individually, taken together the essays represent a valuable set of reflections on the enduring ingredients of leadership.

Ratings and reviews

This was an honest mistake. I read the synopsis in Amazon and found it cheaper here. I was under the impression that it would be, well, profiles on important leaders, but it really wasn't. The book (which has a different cover here from the one in Amazon) is completely focused on Americans. There's nothing on Napoleon, Caesar, Simon Bolivar, or any other person who had made history. It also leaves the impression that the US has been ruling the world for the past 100 years or more. At some point, it even suggests that the WWI was won by the US, and that, being such an almighty power, any other mistakes or losses (e.g. Vietnam, stalemate in Korea), are only attributable to the presidents involved. Also, as such an American centric book, there are profiles on people nobody else in the world knows, e.g. John Joseph McGraw. Very disappointed with it, even more because I'm a huge Walter Isaacson fan.

some chapters are much better written than others. overall good and I learned a good deal.

About the author

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and of Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.