In his Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills reframed
our understanding of Lincoln the leader. Wills breathed new life into words we thought we knew and revealed much
about a President so mythologized but often misunderstood. He showed how Lincoln's personality was less at issue
than his followers' values and Lincoln's exquisite ability, in a mere 272 words, to reach them, to give the whole
nation "a new birth of freedom," and to weave a spell that has not yet been broken. Now Wills extends
his extraordinary quality of observation and iconoclastic scholarship to examine the nature of leadership itself,
perhaps history's most pivotal and emotionally charged topic. Almost the first thing people say about leaders is
that we used to have them but now do not. Some blame this on the press, or on television, or on education. Others
say we are manipulated, not led. Still others pore over book after book, searching for the perfect exemplar to
imitate in order to achieve success. Wills offers a wide range of portraits drawn largely, but not exclusively,
from American history and representing revolutionary, political, religious, business, artistic, sports, and military
leaders - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Andrew Young, Napoleon, King David, Ross Perot,
George Washington, Socrates, Mary Baker Eddy, Carl Stotz, Martha Graham, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesare Borgia,
and Dorothy Day - each shown in the act of leading his or her followers. And after each example, Wills also provides
an anti-type to help define the type better. He moves beyond the traditional study of elected officials and business
giants, past the usual emphasis on glamour, forceful personality, or technique, to look at leaders of different
scope and particular talents.