Profiles in Leadership

Isaacson (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life) introduces a welcome collection of new essays by both academics and popular wordsmiths on their choices for U.S. pacesetters as examples of leadership. Most of the subjects are white men who surmounted personal obstacles, although Native American Chief Joseph and African American civil rights pioneers W.E.B. DuBois and Pauli Murray are also included. Selections range from Giants baseball manager John J. McGraw (chosen by Kevin Baker), evangelist Charles Grandison Finney (Frances Fitzgerald), Wendell Willkie (David Levering Lewis), and J.P. Morgan (Jean Strouse) to such usual choices as General George Washington, FDR, General (not President) Eisenhower, and Ulysses S. Grant as a better than previously considered President. Isaacson maintains that astute leaders are not necessarily the most brilliant people but have the traits and skills to balance pragmatism with principle, listen to disparate opinions, and weld them, through effective communication, into working coalitions. Readers might want to compare these ideas with those on transformational leadership in James MacGregor Burns's Leadership.