Forged in Crisis

From a brilliant historian at the Harvard Business School, here is a masterful, in-depth portrait of five extraordinary figures—Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rachel Carson—that illuminates how great leaders are made in times of adversity and the diverse skills they summon in order to prevail.
Ten years in the writing, Forged in Crisis, by renowned Harvard Business School historian and Davos and Aspen Institute speaker Nancy Koehn, presents five remarkable life journeys—those of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton; President Abraham Lincoln; legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson. What do such disparate figures have in common? Why do their stories speak to us so powerfully today?
Koehn begins each of the book's five sections by showing her protagonist on the precipice of a great crisis: Shackleton marooned on...