Leadership: In Turbulent Times
- Book
- Sep 18, 2018
- #Leadership #Biography #History
Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader?
In Lea...
Show More
Number of Pages: 473
ISBN: 1476795924
ISBN-13: 9781476795928
Mentions
See All
Ryan Holiday @RyanHoliday
·
Dec 22, 2020
- Curated in The (Very) Best Books I Read in 2020
This is an absolutely incredible book. I think I marked up nearly every page. The book is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, and it is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research… and yet somehow not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even stuff I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now—a timely reminder that leadership matters. Or as the Stoics say: character is fate. Or as I wrote about in this piece about leadership during the plague in ancient Rome: when things break down, good leaders have to stand up. After Goodwin, I picked up Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History by Andrew Roberts, who I find to be funny, insightful and quite good at capturing the essence of unique historical figures. I also recommend Roberts’ biographies of Churchill and Napoleon (you can listen to my interview with Roberts here). As I said, now is the time to get perspective and to learn from the past.