A convincingly argued, well-researched counternarrative to the history of “great leaders.”
A historian challenges popular trends in leadership studies in this nonfiction book.
With American companies spending more than $50 billion annually on leadership development and leadership studies becoming one of the fastest-growing academic disciplines, “leadership is all the hype these days,” according to Gutmann. And while he sees value in the field, as a scholar of history, he is disturbed by one of the area’s most prominent trends: drawing inspirational leadership lessons from history’s most recognizable names, from Genghis Khan to John F. Kennedy. The historical narratives crafted by some of the principal books of the genre fall victim to what the author describes as the “Action Fallacy” or “the mistaken belief that the best leaders are those who generate the most noise and sensational activity in the most dramatic circumstances.” Not only do these stories ignore the nuances of historical, cultural, and social forces that shape the lived experiences of humanity, but they also contribute to a misunderstanding of what makes a good leader by “promoting the wrong people for the wrong reasons.” Centering on four case studies—explorer Roald Amundsen, Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, archeologist Gertrude Bell, and British prime minister Winston Churchill—the book offers a convincing revisionist take on leadership studies. Gutmann emphasizes his belief that “successful leadership has little to do with Hollywood stereotypes or heroic struggles,” as many leaders were “at times mere side characters, barely hanging on to the coattails of history.” Beyond its astute analysis, the book suggests that perhaps the greatest insight history provides on leadership studies is that the best leaders are not those who draw the most attention through “bluster,” but those who are able to read the trends of their time and “swim with, instead of against, the current.” With a Ph.D. in history and as the author of multiple books, Gutmann has a solid command of historical context, and backs his argument with a network of more than 300 research endnotes. The book’s impressive scholarship is balanced with an engaging and accessible writing style that targets general readers.
A convincingly argued, well-researched counternarrative to the history of “great leaders.”Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2023
ISBN: 9783031378287
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Springer
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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