The celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn examines five masters of crisis: explorer Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and environmental crusader Rachel Carson, in this "engaging, unusually rewarding book...[which] will foster a new appreciation for effective leadership and prompt many readers to lament the lack of it in the world today" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
What do these seemingly diverse individuals have in common? Why do these incredible stories continue to astonish and inspire people? Nancy Koehn provides a unique pattern by which to assess our objectives and, more importantly, to judge those in our time to whom we've placed our faith in her "enthralling...fascinating look at a variegated set of heroes" (Publishers Weekly).
Koehn opens each segment by putting her protagonist on the verge of a major crisis: "five stand-alone case studies that are well-written and fascinating" (The New York Times). Shackleton is stranded on an Antarctic ice floe; Lincoln is on the danger of losing the Union; fugitive slave Douglass is on the edge of being apprehended; Bonhoeffer is struggling over how to combat ultimate evil with religion; Carson is battling illness in order to preserve the earth. Readers then learn about each person's childhood and see them develop into the person they will eventually become, step by step. Significantly, as we follow each leader's against-all-odds path, we begin to see an important reality emerge: leaders are not born, but created. The most inspiring epiphany in a book full of them may be that we all have the power and guts to lead.
Forged in Crisis is "a tremendously entertaining (and thoroughly documented)...book that quietly surpasses many so-called leadership tomes" because it "provides both deep insight and brilliantly depicted human drama" (Booklist, starred review).
He realized that slavery and the racial discrimination that underlay it contaminated whites as well as blacks and damaged the fabric of the nation. At an even deeper level, he recognized that Americans (or any other people) couldn’t become all they might in the presence of widespread prejudice against their fellow citizens.
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