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In 1978, Pulitzer Prize- and National Book
Award-winning political scientist James MacGregor Burns
published Leadership, his seminal examination of
how leaders shape the course of history by transforming
followers into creative new leaders. The book became the
cornerstone of the emerging field of leadership studies
and of hundreds of leadership programs in business and government.
Now Burns expands the subject, offering a new vision --
Transforming Leadership -- focusing on the ways that
leaders emerge from being ordinary "transactional"
deal-makers to become dynamic agents of major social change
who empower their followers.
Burns illuminates the evolution of leadership
structures, from the chieftains of tribal African societies,
through Europe's absolute monarchies, to the blossoming
of the Enlightenment's ideals of liberty and democracy during
the American Revolution. Along the way he looks at key breakthroughs
in leadership and the towering leaders who attempted to
transform their worlds -- Elizabeth I, Washington, Jefferson,
Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gorbachev, and others.
The book culminates in a bold and innovative
plan to address the greatest global leadership challenge
of the twenty-first century: the long-intractable problem
of global poverty.
Engagingly written, original, and provocative,
Transforming Leadership will arouse discussion and
controversy in classrooms and boardrooms throughout the
country.
James MacGregor Burns is Senior Scholar
at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University
of Richmond and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government
Emeritus at Williams College. He is the author of numerous
books, including Leadership; Roosevelt: The Lion
and the Fox; Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom
(winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award);
The Deadlock of Democracy; The American Experiment;
Presidential Government: The Crucible of Leadership;
and most recently The Three Roosevelts (with coauthor
Susan Dunn).
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