A comparison of nine leaders who led their nations through the greatest wars the world has ever seen and whose unique strengths—and weaknesses—shaped the course of human history, from the bestselling, award-winning author of Churchill, Napoleon, and The Last King of America “Has the enjoyable feel of a lively dinner table conversation with an opinionated guest.” —The New York Times Book Review Taking us from the French Revolution to the Cold War, Andrew Roberts presents a bracingly honest and deeply insightful look at nine major figures in modern history: Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George C. Marshall, Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Margaret Thatcher. Each of these leaders fundamentally shaped the outcome of the war in which their nation was embroiled. Is war leadership unique, or did these leaders have something in common, traits and techniques that transcend time and place and can be applied to the essential nature of conflict? Meticulously researched and compellingly written, Leadership in War presents readers with fresh, complex portraits of leaders who approached war with different tactics and weapons, but with the common goal of success in the face of battle. Both inspiring and cautionary, these portraits offer important lessons on leadership in times of struggle, unease, and discord. With his trademark verve and incisive observation, Roberts reveals the qualities that doom even the most promising leaders to failure, as well as the traits that lead to victory.

As the demand for comparative studies of leadership rises, managers and trainers are looking harder than ever for new studies to which trainees will not bring preconceived idea. This unique book delivers just that. Though the contexts have changed, the examination of ancient events from a business perspective provides a wealth of useful insights on how the process of leadership works. From China’s first emperor Liu Bang on vision and Pericles on integrity to Alexander the Great on communication and Ramesses II on courage, Leadership Lessons from the Ancient World combines history with business to show that the universal strategies used by great leaders of the past are still relevant today.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life...And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Steve Jobs I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. Nelson Mandela All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. Walt Disney It is a voyage. Sometimes the journey is in the dark, through a mist or a storm. The trip is guided by a compass, the sun, the stars, the light of the moon, matched by instinct and experience. It is called leadership. In the worst of times leaders struggle to navigate, survive and reach their port of call. In the best of times they glide smoothly across the horizon to success. The wind in their sails that moves them forward fearlessly, relentlessly and without trepidation is called courage. There was a time when the courage to lead was common place. It was found in many quarters. Politicians, small and large captains of commerce and industry, soldiers and sailors, men and women of the cloth and ordinary citizens expressed themselves with bravery, integrity, character and good example. They did so above the call of duty. Some had choices, others did not. Yet in each instance they knew that to lead, to achieve, to succeed they had to be fearless. They were our models. They were our heroes and heroines. It is their example that we need now more than ever. For decades, experts have searched for the formula that produces great leadership. The list is long and intricate. It varies from one setting to another. There is one trait that cuts across all the elements. It is the fundamental quality that unites them...courage. It is the essence of leadership. History is filled with examples of this unique attribute being the driving force of leaders. Courage is not only a special quality. It is a virtue because to exhibit it requires an act of morality. Each day we face moments where we may need to be heroic. It could be to defend a colleague or to tell the truth, or save a life, even if the consequences could be severe. The obstacle to courage is fear. We live in an age of fear. In the public and private sectors, in our everyday lives, we are gripped by insecurity and anxiety. In this work, we tell about people who overcame fear. It is about the great and the unknown, the rich and famous and the forgotten men and women who truly made a difference in our world. Our stories are organized in three parts: - Political Courage is about choices, integrity, honesty and character that affect principles, values, the public good and the conflict between what is best for country vs. what is best for the politician. - Personal and Professional Courage deals with our daily lives and our careers and our ability to confront pain, agony, intimidation, survival and the willingness to do the right thing in the face of opposition, scandal, shame, personal loss and disappointment. - Spiritual Courage concerns our place in the universe, believing in a higher being and understanding that we are on a mission to improve the lot of mankind and the world. It is living beyond ourselves and for others. From the President to the longshoreman to the fisherman, the peddler to the baseball player, to the nun and the holy man in India, each needed courage to lead themselves and others and each led with conviction and bravery. Their words, their lives are as meaningful to us today as they were years, decades or centuries ago. They are our models and our heroes and heroines to look up to and emulate. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' Eleanor Roosevelt

Learn the many qualities found in every great...

“Drawing universal truths from urgent battlefield crises, the author provides a terrific guide and training tool for leaders at all levels” (Ralph Peters, New York Times–bestselling author). The odds were against the Allies on June 6, 1944. The task ahead of the paratroopers who jumped over Normandy and the soldiers who waded ashore onto the beaches, all under fire, was colossal. In such circumstances, good leadership can be the deciding factor of victory or defeat. This book is about the extraordinary leadership of seven men who led American soldiers on D-Day and the days that followed. Some of them, like Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., and Lt. Dick Winters, are well known, while others are barely a footnote in the history books. This book is not a full history of D-Day, nor does it cover the heroic leadership shown by men in the armies of the Allies or members of the French Resistance, who also participated in the Normandy assault and battles for the lodgment areas. It is, however, a primer on how you can lead today, no matter what your occupation or role in life, by learning from the leadership of these seven figures. A critical task for every leader is to understand what leadership is. Socrates once said that you cannot understand something unless you can first define it in your own words. This book provides the reader with the means to define leadership by telling seven dramatic, immersive, and memorable stories that the reader will never forget. “Nobody tells a story better than John Antal and nobody knows better how to root out the lessons of history.” —James Jay Carafano, author of Wiki at War

In the twentieth century, great leaders played vital roles in making the world a fairer and more peaceful place. How did they do it? What lessons can be drawn for the twenty-first-century global agenda? Those questions are at the heart of The Peacemakers, a kind of global edition of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. Writing at a time when peace seems elusive and conflict endemic, when tensions are running high among the major powers, when history has come roaring back, when democracy and human rights are yet again under siege, when climate change is moving from future to present tense, and when transformational statesmanship is so needed, Bruce W. Jentleson shows how twentieth-century leaders of a variety of types—national, international institutional, sociopolitical, nongovernmental—rewrote the zero-sum scripts they were handed and successfully made breakthroughs on issues long thought intractable. The stories are fascinating: Henry Kissinger, Zhou Enlai, and the U.S.-China opening; Mikhail Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War; Dag Hammarskjöld’s exceptional effectiveness as United Nations secretary-general; Nelson Mandela and South African reconciliation; Yitzhak Rabin seeking Arab-Israeli peace; Mahatma Gandhi as exemplar of anticolonialism and an apostle of nonviolence; Lech Walesa and ending Soviet bloc communism; Gro Harlem Brundtland and fostering global sustainability; and a number of others. While also taking into account other actors and factors, Jentleson tells us who each leader was as an individual, why they made the choices they did, how they pursued their goals, and what they were (and weren’t) able to achieve. And not just fascinating, but also instructive. Jentleson draws out lessons across the twenty-first-century global agenda, making clear how difficult peacemaking is, while powerfully demonstrating that it has been possible—and urgently stressing how necessary it is today. An ambitious book for ambitious people, The Peacemakers seeks to contribute to motivating and shaping the breakthroughs on which our future so greatly depends.

Where is leadership when we need it? What can today’s corporate, non-profit, military, and public-service leaders learn from daring decisions that changed history? In Time to Lead, Jan-Benedict Steenkamp presents a fresh examination of history-making leaders by holding a magnifying glass up to a life-changing dilemma each of them faced. What we learn is how powerful the personalities of leaders and their decision-making processes can be in determining the course of human events—and the fates of millions of people. Steenkamp explains how these great men and women arrived at the solutions to the problems they confronted by virtue of their character traits and whether they were foxes or hedgehogs—as in the ancient parable—or, as he further categorizes, eagles or ostriches. Sixteen carefully curated case studies hold powerful lessons that today’s leaders can apply in their own professional lives. Readers will recognize Roosevelt, Washington, Mandela, Thatcher, Alexander the Great, and MLK, but other lesser-known leaders, such as Themistocles, Clovis, Peter, Fisher, and Nightingale provide equally valuable insights into how individuals make decisions based upon one of seven leadership styles (adaptive, persuasive, directive, disruptive, authentic, servant, and charismatic) and four personality classifications (hedgehog, fox, eagle, or ostrich). Steenkamp’s assessment tools provide seasoned and aspiring leaders alike with the means to not only determine their own individual styles, but how to step up when they inevitably come face-to-face with their own moments of truth. Chapter takeaways, leadership principles, and open-ended, reflective questions will confer encouragement, enrichment, and empowerment on readers when they realize they can utilize the same tactics as these leaders in their own lives. Time to Lead is about great men and women, their actions in leadership that have withstood the test of time, what we can learn from them—and the lessons that are relevant for us here and now.

One of the most influential books of the past fifty years, Team of Rivals is Pulitzer Prize–winning author and esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s modern classic about the political genius of Abraham Lincoln, his unlikely presidency, and his cabinet of former political foes. Winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize and the inspiration for the Oscar Award winning–film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, directed by Steven Spielberg, and written by Tony Kushner. On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry. Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war. We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Churchill and Napoleon The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy. Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon--a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth: George III was in fact a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck. In The Last King of America, Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III's American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch.

This is a book that you can read in one sitting. This also is a book that you will not soon forget. One part history lesson and one part storytelling, it combines humor and personal experiences to reveal how even the best of leaders and managers can flub upor excel! Dont you make the same mistakes! Although intended for physicians new to leadership roles in this age of team-oriented healthcare management, anyone can benefit from its examples. Presented in no specific order, and often ranging far away from strict medical subjects, the reader can take his or her time to absorb the presented subject matters, be it military or administrative in nature. Additionally, there are a few stories about being a husband and father. Just dont forget to have fun reading them.