Leadership in Turbulent Times

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Sep 2018 · Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning presidential historian, “Leadership should help us raise our expectations of our national leaders, our country and ourselves” (The Washington Post).

Doris Kearns Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope.

Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged ready to confront the dilemmas of their times. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader?

“Doris Kearns Goodwin leads the league of presidential historians” —USA Today

“Inspiring.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Insightful, readable, compelling.” —The Boston Globe.

“Written in the companionable prose that makes Goodwin’s books surefire best sellers.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A bravura performance.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“If ever our nation needed a short course on presidential leadership, it is now.” —Seattle Times

“Doris Kearns Goodwin has prepared a marvelous banquet with four leaders whose lives provide lessons for all of us. Pull up a chair.” —Warren Buffett

Ratings and reviews

awesome! Thank you for telling this story.

About the author

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s work for President Johnson launched her career as a presidential historian. Her first book was Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She followed up with the Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in World War II. She earned the Lincoln Prize for Team of Rivals, in part the basis for Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, and the Carnegie Medal for The Bully Pulpit, about the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Her last book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times was the inspiration for the History Channel docuseries on Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, which she executive produced.