The Risk-Takers: American Leaders in Desperate Times

Scholars have concluded that leadership is among the most studied of phenomena yet the least understood. This inability to precisely define leadership recalls Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's struggles to define pornography: "I shall not...attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that... But I know it when I see it." Similarly, when it comes to leadership, we know it when we see it.

This book explores the leadership performance of Abraham Linco...