Biography of great leaders

Inshe became the leader of her political party in Germany, and in the first female chancellor of Germany, the first East German chancellor, and the youngest chancellor she was During her four terms as chancellor, she served as the leader of Germany, a country with the most people and power in Europe. No wonder she is still a famous world leader!

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, was the first African American to hold the office. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he was a civil rights attorney and represented the 13th District in the Illinois Senate for three terms before becoming president. He became one of the most famous world leaders when he assumed office as president in January and was reelected to a second term in November He came from a politically influential family—his father, Shintaro Abe, was the longest-serving postwar foreign minister, and his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was the former prime minister of Japan.

He was tragically assassinated on July 8,while giving a speech in support of a political candidate. Learn more about Shinzo Abe at Britannica. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is the first woman head of state in Mexico. She is a scientist who has worked on applying science to public policy and served as governor of Mexico City before running for president.

Learn more about Claudia Sheinbaum at Britannica. Jacinda Ardern became the youngest female head of the government in the world when she was sworn in as the 40th prime minister of New Zealand at just 37 years of age. She was also the youngest leader of the Labour Party, which she joined at just 17, and after Helen Clark, was the second female to lead the party.

Ardern also became the youngest sitting member of Parliament when she entered Parliament at 28 years old. She faced major issues, such as the Christchurch mosque shootings in and the COVID pandemic, during her time in office. She resigned as prime minister in Learn more about Jacinda Ardern at Britannica. Long before entering politics, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a successful comedian.

In fact, his production company, Kvartal 95, produced a popular television show called Servant of the People in which he played the president of Ukraine. During the first two years of his administration, Zelenskyy faced many issues including the COVID pandemic and subsequent economic recession. As Ukraine grappled with the impact of these challenges, Russia launched an ongoing full-scale invasion in February Learn more about Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Britannica.

Born in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai was biography of great leaders a high school student when she became the target of the Taliban. She kept a diary, which was published by BBC Urdu, where she tracked the events and condemned the regime. InMalala survived being shot in the head on a school bus by a Taliban gunman.

She and her family fled to England, where they currently live in exile. Learn more about Malala Yousafzai at the Malala Fund. Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is an environmental activist who, despite being a teenager when she began, became famous for demanding immediate action from world leaders for climate change mitigation. She is one of many young, great leaders fighting for solutions to modern concerns.

Learn more about Greta Thunberg at Britannica. Continue Reading. Hammurabifirst King of Babylon Babylonia, circa — B. Learn more about Hammurabi at Kiddle. Hatshepsut, Egyptian pharaoh Egypt, circa — B. Learn more about Ramses II at Kiddle. Learn more about Cyrus the Great at Kiddle. Vatican Museums, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Pericles, Greek politician Greece, — B.

Learn more about Pericles at Kiddle. Unknown author, public domainvia Wikimedia Commons. Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia Macedonia, — B. Dharma from Sadao, Thailand via Wikimedia Commons. Ashoka, emperor of India India, ? Learn more about Ashoka at Britannica. Learn more about Qin Shi Huang at Kiddle. Julius CaesarRoman dictator Rome, —44 B.

Learn more about Julius Caesar at Kiddle. Learn more about Cleopatra at Kiddle. Caesar Augustusfirst Roman emperor Rome, 63 B. Learn more about Caesar Augustus at Kiddle. Attila, king of the Huns Europe, A. Wu Zetianempress of China China, A. Learn more about Wu Zetian at Kiddle. Charlemagneking of the Franks Carolingian Empire, A. Learn more about Charlemagne at Kiddle.

National Portrait Gallery, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Anige of Nepal, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Cresques Abraham, public domainvia Wikimedia Commons. Learn more about Mansa Musa at Kiddle. Njinga Mbandi, queen of the Ambundu Kingdoms Angola, — Njinga Mbandi was the queen of the Mbundu people and resisted Portuguese colonizers in what is now Angola.

John Everett Millais, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Joan of Arcpatron saint of France France, circa A. Hans Holbein the Younger, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Firkin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Formerly attributed to George Gower, public domainvia Wikimedia Commons. Learn more about Elizabeth I at Kiddle. After Alexander Roslin, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Catherine the Greatempress of Russia Russian Empire, — The longest-ruling empress of Russia, Catherine II helped expand Russia and led the country as it became one of the greatest European powers. Gilbert Stuart, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. George Washingtonfirst president of the United States United States, — The first president of the United States is definitely one of the most famous world leaders of all time.

Rembrandt Peale, public domainvia Wikimedia Commons. Thomas JeffersonU. Anonymous author, public domainvia Wikimedia Commons. Learn more about Shaka Zulu at Kiddle. Toronto Public Library, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The founder and former CEO of Ford Motors was a captain of industry but also a pioneer of inclusion in a time when women, minorities and people with disabilities were barred from the workforce.

That said, many of these individuals were also overworked, leading to later labor reform. These leaders had a massive impact on history, and not in a good way. But people followed them nonetheless — a lot of people — and ignoring their significance would erase the mistakes that we as humans need to learn from. Although he may not be considered a great leader in terms of moral fiber, Ghengis Khan was a key figure in shaping the landscape of the ancient world.

He united nomadic tribes under one flag and forged a mighty empire that swept through China and Central Asia. Not many other leaders in history could contend with Napoleon's skill on the battlefield. Using his great leadership skills and ruthless tactics, the French general took his country from the tattered rags of revolution to becoming one of the greatest European powers of the 19th century.

Due to his charismatic "biography of great leaders" style and nationalistic fear-mongering, Adolf Hitler became one of the most powerful leaders of all time as he rose to prominence in Germany's Nazi fascist political party in the midth century. Following the promise of returning Germany to the rank of a major European power, Nazi forces spread like a plague across Western and Central Europe during World War II and carried out the atrocities of the Holocaust.

This ruthless leader of the Soviet Union came from humble beginnings as a not-so-honorable Robin Hood character who found political power during the Bolshevik Revolution. After Stalin ousted Vladimir Lenin, he ruled as a dictator of the Soviet Union between and his death in During his year reign, Stalin and his Soviet Union forces fought Nazis on the eastern front before entering Cold War tensions with their former allies.

The advent of the nuclear bomb set East and West on a collision course that continued through the Space Race and several Olympic rivalries. Mao was the most influential Marxist theorist and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party. He is regarded as one of the most important world-famous leaders for architecting his country's economic and cultural development plan, known as the "Great Leap Forward.

No list of the most famous world leaders list would be complete without traveling back to the Middle Ages and beyond to discuss some of the most influential movers and shakers of all time. Julius Caesar was one of the great leaders on the battlefield during the Gaelic Wars. However, his leadership skills were overshadowed by his personal ambition as he dissolved the first Triumvirate of the Roman Republic during a civil war and acquired supreme power in the Eternal City.

There would be no Roman Empire without the work and accomplishments of the first Roman Emperor, Augustus. Although he isn't as much of a household name as his adoptive father, Julius, Augustus was a progressive leader who restored peace with Pax-Romana following the chaos after Julius' assassination. Unlike many biographies, Exactly As You Are goes beyond the person it is profiling and captures the relationship between a leader and the led.

Rogers led by setting a wonderful example and by expressing confidence in people. That seems beyond the ability or inclination of so many so-called leaders in business and politics. Regardless of your political orientation, if you have any interest in leadership, you should read this book. Trump, and most people who read it will do so for that reason alone.

But on another level altogether, it is a harrowing account of the repercussions of incompetent leadership—regardless of the venue or locus of the putative leader. The author, Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story inand who has written eighteen other books on politics and policymaking at the highest levels of the U.

He and an aide recorded dozens of interviews with individuals having intimate, firsthand knowledge of discussions and decisions in the West Wing. This account of the first year and a half of the Trump administration is detailed, brutal, and damning, though the reader also gets an occasional glimpse of a real human being under all that orange hair.

Also, several White House officials emerge from the biography of great leaders as thoughtful, careful individuals: Reince Priebus, who has the distinction of serving the shortest tenure in American history as a presidential chief of staff; Rex Tillerson, the former CEO and chairman of Exxon Mobil, who tried valiantly to serve as secretary of state; H.

McMaster, the national security advisor who sought to impose a modicum of strategic thinking, and Gary Cohn, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, who argued in vain against tariffs and for multilateral organizations, are the adults in the room. As a case study in poor leadership, Fear paints a colorful picture of the carnage that inevitably follows in the wake of bad leadership, not the least of which is a litany of profane, vicious recriminations of the leader by the people closest to him.

Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a most unusual biography, for it is organized not by time but by theme—forty of them. Of particular note, the author has painstakingly balanced dueling perspectives. In the chapter on Churchill as a parent, for example, she begins by explaining how and why he was a terrific father, and then proceeds to explain how and why he was an awful father.

Of his wit, she captures his mastery of the bon mot and then expounds on his insufferable rudeness. All of which portrays Churchill as a walking paradox, a human contradiction, which, for Churchill if not for most of us, sums it up pretty well. The author is neither a historian nor, beyond the prodigious research required for this book, even an expert on Churchill.

Rather, she is a professor at Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management, and she began working on this volume only upon reading a book about Churchill that stoked her curiosity. She felt a need to know more about this phenomenally vital man whose presence, personality, and perseverance quite literally saved England in its darkest hour—and perhaps also spared Western democracy, as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this compact book, and I believe you will, as well. But it truly is substantial and consequential, too. On his ascension to the papacy inCardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first pope in history to take the name Francis. He explained his choice as a tribute to the thirteenth century Umbrian friar whose life stands as an exemplary model of Christlike ministry to the poor, sick, and downtrodden.

Seeking to understand this remarkable man and to appreciate the long shadow of leadership he cast despite living only to the age of forty-four, I turned to this readable, biography. I was not disappointed. Francis of Assisi, I learned, grew up in material comfort as the son of a successful cloth merchant and led a youthful life of debauchery before serving in the military and even spending a year in a dungeon as a prisoner of war.

He preached without licensure to the townspeople, but he was also shrewd enough to secure the consent of the pope Innocent III prior to establishing the Franciscan Order, lest he and it be declared heretical. Its earliest known publication is seven centuries later, inwhen it was published in a French magazine. The earliest known English publication was an anonymous entry in a Quaker periodical in By the way, the Canadian singer and songwriter Sarah McLachlan recorded it as a song on her album, Surfacing.

It, too, is exquisite. Unlike the other, its provenance is known; it was written in the early s by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Shirer scroll down for my reviewI sought out the Longerich volume, the most recent of several biographies of Goebbels, for its insights on the origin and growth of authoritarianism through propaganda. Frankly, I was not completely rewarded.

This book has its strengths, but I was looking for something more in terms of a deep understanding of mass indoctrination. My sense is more of the others. On the other hand, I have a much clearer understanding of narcissistic personality cults.

Biography of great leaders: Popular Leadership Biography Books ;

Goebbels, who had earned a Ph. His psyche reflected both his deformed foot and his delusional mind. He suffered from a psychologically needy personality, and he was jilted by the love of his life—something he never quite got over. He was ambitious but profoundly narcissistic. His attachment to Hitler fed a desperate, insatiable need for affirmation, and Hitler knew it.

One can only imagine the biography of great leaders of those extended visits. He strikes me as the consummate bureaucrat—utterly sycophantic, implacably loyal, absurdly servile—but also morally bankrupt and as evil as evil can possibly be. Few people appreciate it today, but a century ago World War I—the Great War, as it was known at the time—was only the second worst scourge for most Americans.

The worst was an epidemic of influenza that would claim between twenty million and forty million fatalities, more than the war and more than any other epidemic in world history. And the most celebrated and influential scientist of the s wasn't Einstein or Curie or Planck or Bohr. It was one William Henry Welch, a physician whose contributions to medical research were so profound they got to the root of the epidemic.

Of special note, Welch did little or no original research of his own. Instead, he synthesized the research of others in such a way that his peers could see something more than the sum of individual research projects. Even more to the point as a model of leadership, Welch inspired uncounted young physicians to take a methodical, scientific, empirical approach to the diagnosis of disease.

He asked questions in such a way as to ignite curiosity, link relevant findings together, and determine causation. Barry paints a colorful picture of Welch: "Like an Escher drawing, his life both represented that of others and simultaneously defined the lives of those who followed him, and those who followed them, and those who followed them, down to the present.

I especially resonated to Barry's analysis of Welch's genius for learning, which the author describes as probing vertically and seeing horizontally. The former allows you to discover new information; the latter enables you to assimilate and weave together. The singular question connecting the two epistemologies is at the heart of the matter.

It is simply: "So what? It doesn't reach back beyond a passing glance here and there to her childhood, education, or years as first lady of Arkansas and the United States. Nor, having been published indoes it address her campaign for the presidency. What it does do is bring the reader into her years of face-to-face diplomacy and realpolitik, and it provides vivid examples and context for important leadership lessons on dedication, perseverance, and commitment to values.

I can recommend it to friend and open-minded foe alike. Unless you are an irrational, head-in-the-sand ideologue or partisan, you will likely find her spirited emphasis on human rights and articulate promotion of democratic values, free trade, and economic development to be invigorating. The behind-the-scenes descriptions of real diplomacy are colorful and fascinating.

Biography of great leaders: Here is an annotated bibliography

Her account of Benghazi will be controversial, but at the very least it presents her perspective and lays things out in an orderly, coherent manner. I thought the final chapters on technology and on human rights were alone worth the price of the book. Best of all, she tells story after story, and either she had some talented ghost writers or she is a much, much better writer than her husband, whose memoir I also recently read.

See my assessment of My Life by Bill Clinton below. All in all, highly recommended. This is a colorful, engaging biography of a real swashbuckler. Lawrence was an endlessly fascinating, deeply mysterious, and extraordinarily complex man who arguably did more than anyone to predefine today's fault lines in the Middle East. By extrapolation, Hero is also a story of freelance leadership with profound lessons on initiative, risk, and enterprise.

Today most people recall Lawrence as portrayed by Peter O'Toole, riding a camel and wearing an Arab kaffiyeh, in David Lean's epic movie Lawrence of Arabiabut there is so much more to the story, and Michael Korda captures it well. An archaeologist by training, Lawrence went to Cairo in as an intelligence officer. At the time the Middle East was still controlled by the Ottoman Empire, but the Turkish influence had been waning for a long time.

Commercial quantities of oil were discovered in Egypt only eight years earlier and wouldn't be discovered in the Arab peninsula, home to rival nomadic tribes locked in poverty and under the thumb of the Ottomans, for two more decades. Essentially inventing modern guerrilla warfare, Lawrence collaborated with Hussein bin Ali, the sherif of Mecca portrayed by Omar Sharif in the movieand his son Prince later Emir Faisal portrayed by Alec Guinnessin an insurgency that confounded the Ottomans and compelled them to withdraw from territory they had controlled for centuries.

One minor but revealing example: Lawrence figured out that bombing a curved section of railway would put it out of service longer than bombing a straight section. Modern readers can perhaps best understand Lawrence by Korda's comparison of him to Princess Diana. Korda writes: "They were both magnetically attractive—she was the most often photographed person of her generation, he was the most often photographed, drawn, painted, and sculptured person of his; they both had a natural instinct for adopting a flattering pose in the presence of photographers and artists without even seeming to know they were doing it; they both played cat and mouse with press, while complaining of being victimized by it; they both simultaneously sought and fled celebrity; they both—always a tricky task in Britain—managed to cross class lines whenever they chose to, she by making friends of her servants, he by serving in the ranks of the RAF and the biography of great leaders. Both of them were on the one hand intensely vulnerable, and on the other, exceedingly tough.

My daughter gave me J. Vance's best-selling Hillbilly Elegy as a holiday gift a few years ago. Friends had already raved about it, so I was expecting it to be good. It turned out to be better, much better—utterly fabulous. I tore through it in three days, and I can enthusiastically recommend it to anyone thirsting for grounded insight on the intractable cultural problems endemic to America's rural white underclass.

Vance grew up in circumstances that will astound, alarm, and depress you, and yet he somehow pulled through. On finishing high school, he sensed he was not ready for college, so he enlisted in the Marines. Four years later, he raced through college in just twenty-one months and graduated summa cum laude. His future was now secure, but this is scarcely a chest-thumping victory lap, nor is it a song of Deliverance on a veritable banjo.

Rather, it's a personal narrative and a powerful analysis and critique of the cultural dynamics at play in Appalachia and, by extension, across the rural South and Midwest. I learned a great deal from this book, and I recommend it with a caveat. It is not a commentary on Republican or Democratic social policy, and it is not a jeremiad. Rather, it is a reminder that self-destructive patterns of behavior have awful consequences, and that, whatever our circumstances, we can choose incrementally good or incrementally bad courses of action, with predictable results.

No, he never chopped down a biography of great leaders tree. But what he did do was phenomenal. He united the fractious American colonies and inspired selfless dedication among the rag-tag soldiers he led. Washington could easily have joined that ignominious roster. Upon winning independence from England, his peers were fully prepared to defer to him as subjects to a monarch.

Washington would have nothing of it. In His Excellencyhistorian Joseph Ellis paints a portrait of Washington that is arguably more relevant to leaders now than two hundred years ago. While it is true that Washington derived his wealth from marriage and owned hundreds of slaves, his stature casts an ironic and improbable shadow. History regards him as a cold, aloof, remote historical figure, but he was in fact approachable and accessible, and he was in touch with his emotional core two centuries before most American men found their own way there.

We would know more of his heart if his correspondence with his wife, Martha, survived as the letters between John and Abigail Adams dobut Martha burned all their letters after her husband died. A few escaped her reach, and they survive. Still, what historians have been able to ascertain is that Washington was a singular man whose virtues were so extraordinary that they continue to resonate and inspire more than two hundred years later.

Though certainly not for everyone, and especially not for the faint-of-heart, Laurence Rees's study of charisma, leadership, and the inexplicable appeal of Adolf Hitler to the German people is fascinating and provocative. It tackles—and offers intriguing answers to—the question of how someone like Hitler could take hold of an entire population of educated, thinking people.

Like the nineteenth century German sociologist Max Weber who coined the term, Rees views charisma not as a personality trait but as a power dynamic between a leader and the led. It is a function therefore of the need to be led. Today, three generations removed from the scourge of Naziism, we can view videotapes of Hitler giving a speech and see a madman, but many Germans, caught in the grip of humiliation and poverty of the s, instead saw a messiah.

Rees's conclusion: Charisma is in the eye of the beholder, and it can be very dangerous. In my workshops and classes on leadership, I say much the same thing. When a charismatic leader presents himself, question your instincts and then question them again. It doesn't always end well. Shirer below. Neither biography nor memoir, How to Be a Dictator is a breezy—and, yes, irreverent—thematic survey of tyrants, autocrats, despots, fascists, strongmen, authoritarians, power mongers, little Hitlers, and assorted other iron-fisted and muddle-headed dictators around the world.

The author, Mikal Hem, is a Norwegian journalist who lived as a youngster in Zimbabwe, which at the time was under the thumb of Robert Mugabe; as a young scholar, he studied dictators and dictatorships at Oxford University. His book, published in but translated to English only inis both laugh-out-loud funny and cry-in-your-beer depressing, but it is also historically accurate and analytically trenchant.

In one colorful vignette after another, Hem paints a portrait of real and aspiring dictators whose creative zeal for dispatching critics and political enemies to oblivion—and for lining their own pockets, not surprisingly—knows no bounds. He was arrested, repatriated to North Korea, and branded as a capitalist by his fun-loving father. Jong-nam soon found himself exiled to Macao and, some years later, was assassinated by a couple of dupes who exposed him to deadly VX nerve gas at the behest of his half-brother and now North Korean strongman, Kim Jong-un.

So it goes. Then there are the odd little facts. That Mao Zedong once offered to give U. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ten thousand Chinese women, and when Kissinger demurred, Mao upped the offer to ten million? I tore through this book in a couple of days, and I expect you will, too. The author was but a teenager when she wrote it, and yet she had the wisdom of an elder.

She is the youngest person and the only girl ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which she won in In the pages of this book she writes insightfully of the Pakistani culture and its vulnerability to radical exploitation: "We Pashtuns love shoes but don't love the cobbler; we love our scarves but do not respect the weaver. Manual workers have made a great contribution to our society but received no recognition, and this is the reason so many of them joined the Taliban—to finally achieve status and power.

Something similar can be said of many cultures, both national and corporate. This is a marvelous, inspiring read, whose author is a young lady well beyond her years. This is a fabulous, readable biography of an unlikely general and president, as well as a fascinating chronicle of World War II, the birth of NATO, the horrors of Joseph McCarthy's red scare, the civil rights struggle of the '50s, and the brink of the Vietnam War.

It is also a blessed recollection of the Republican Party my grandmother knew and a story of quiet perseverance. For sixteen years, Dwight D. Eisenhower labored in obscurity as a major in the U. No one expected significant achievement of him, let alone historic greatness. He lacked any experience commanding anything of significant size. Then he advanced rapidly, and within a few years he was suddenly commanding the largest amphibious assault in world history.

Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and even Erwin Rommel. Eisenhower was none of the foregoing, but if I were a soldier I would take his leadership any day. To be sure, as an orator Eisenhower was no Demosthenes or Cicero. Korda quotes a popular parody of Ike as Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: "I haven't checked these figures but eighty-seven years ago, I think it was, a number of individuals organized a governmental set-up here in this country, I believe it covered certain Eastern areas, with this idea that they were following up based on a sort of national independence arrangement, and the program that every individual is as good as every other individual.

In a nationally televised biography of great leaders speech three days before his presidency ended, Eisenhower warned against the growing "military-industrial complex" and against uncontrolled exploitation of environmental resources, both of which threaten us still. Not bad for a man with a garbled mouth. I enthusiastically recommend this book for any serious biography or history buff.

The book is excellent. Instant Replay blazed the trail for the genre of memoirs by professional athletes. It is the diary of Jerry Kramer, an offensive lineman on the legendary Green Bay Packers of the s, perhaps the best American football team ever. The narrative builds like fiction, culminating in the phenomenal Ice Bowl game for the National Football League championship improbably won on a quarterback sneak in the final seconds.

Lombardi was very much what we describe as a 5th Degree leader. He stands today as a case study in powerful servant leadership. Lombardi knew the importance of establishing culture, and he appreciated his own role in that task, even and perhaps especially when it came to matters apart from football. But when the restaurant where we were eating our team meals told Vince that the negro players had to enter and leave by the back door, he made certain that every man on the team entered and left by the back door.

Here in Chicago, Humboldt Park is both a park and a Puerto Rican neighborhood in the vicinity of the park. His name endures for good reason; in his lifetime, Humboldt was the most famous scientist in the world. Today his little-remembered legacy lives on in surprising ways, especially in terms of environmental science and stewardship. He brought an intuitive grasp of interconnectedness to all that he saw on his far-flung explorations.

Another: To protect their crops, early American farmers massacred birds but then had to cope with millions of insects that birds were no longer eating. For centuries before him, thinkers had taken an anthropocentric view of nature. Humboldt turned that around, so that people began to see themselves as bit players on a much, much larger stage. Here was a young, aristocratic man born and reared in the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the Industrial Revolution.

He was a casual friend of both Goethe and Schiller. He would not stand still. As soon as he could, given the turbulence of his times, he set off to see what the world was made of.

Biography of great leaders: This collective biography on

Humboldt, like Christopher Columbus three centuries earlier, managed to persuade the Spanish crown to finance his exploration of South America. The books he wrote chronicling the journey became bestsellers, and he became famous. For the remainder of his life, wherever he went, and it was far and wide, his reputation preceded him. Chris Matthews was never one of my favorite talking heads on TV—he was too strident and too disrespectful of his guests, for my taste—but he turns out to be a terrific biographer.

His life of John F. Neither does it shrink from portraying Kennedy as a profile in courage. Joe McCarthy, and his muscular twisting of arms on Capitol Hill. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a passion for politics and the corridors of power, regardless of what you thought of the author when he held forth nightly on cable television.

Though a hugely consequential founding father, James Madison receives few of the hosannas that Americans so liberally heap on the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and lately Alexander Hamilton. In this biography of the fourth U. Her book is solid and competent, though it inexplicably glosses over a couple of things that deserve more attention.

Cheney has some excellent material to work with. Although younger than most of his revolutionary peers and downright boyish in appearanceMadison was brilliant. He wrote the influential Virginia Plan that called for a bicameral legislature and three branches of government, brought an expansive vision of a continental America to the Constitutional Convention ofcontributed significantly to The Federalist Paperslargely authored the U.

Constitution though not the famous Preamble, which was the work of Gouverneur Morrisand championed the articulation of liberties that became the Bill of Rights—all before he was forty. Together with Jefferson, he laid the foundation for what is today the Republican Party. A longtime opponent of a standing army—he regarded it as incompatible with a republic—he changed his mind and presided over the creation of a formal, permanent military when he realized it was essential to national security.

I myself learned a couple of big lessons from this book. The first was a lesson on federalism. Madison argued eloquently that smaller jurisdictions i. The second was an insight on diversity. Diversity, he said, sustains freedom and wards off overweening power and corruption. For my druthers Cheney devotes too little narrative to this remarkable and heroic act, and likewise to the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Still, this is a worthwhile book, and I can recommend it to any history buff or student of leadership. There was a time when—as only the second woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, as an informal advisor to eight U. She certainly deserves to be, still. In Jane AddamsLouise Knight recovers the life of a girl who grew up in affluence just outside Rockford, Illinois, in the s and s.

But he died at the age of fifty-nine. That gave her an idea. On her return to the United States, she and the first of her two long-term biographies of great leaders founded a similar operation in the burgeoning city of Chicago. The Hull House, named for a wealthy gentleman whose mansion was purchased for the purpose, provided support to thousands of European immigrants.

People came to the Hull House for English lessons and other educational classes, social activities, household advice, the arts, and recreation. Some of it was razed in the s to make room for an urban campus for the University of Illinois, but you can still tour what remains of it today. Knight captures multiple aspects of Jane Addams: her intellect, her ambition, her personality, her political views, her fame, her romances and sexuality, her work ethic, her writing and speeches, and more.

That puts this marvelous work on another plane altogether. The author, who also wrote an earlier book on Addams Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy is more an expert on Addams than a general biographer who just happened to indulge a curiosity on Addams. I can recommend her book to anyone who wishes to learn more about this trailblazing reformer.

A phenomenal leader, Jane Addams most certainly was. Jesus of Nazareth is and always will be one of the singular leaders in world history. His life—patchy and sketchy though it appears to us after two thousand years of perfervid belief, irreligious doubt, scriptural translation, and apostolic interpretation, debate, and re-interpretation—deserves to be studied by secular as well as ecclesiastical students of leadership.

More books have been written about Jesus than anyone else in history. I have read only a handful of them. Of them, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan scroll down for my review will likely appeal to secularists, as its account rests on historical record as well as the canonical gospels. Both books are readable and concise.

In contrast to our own age, little had changed over the millennia before Jesus. But disruption was in the air. Roman engineers had invented cement, from which they could build superb roads, bridges, and aqueducts that survive even today. Rome itself was emerging from the cocoon of a republic to become an empire that dominated the entire Mediterranean and enforced its laws by means of fierce violence.

Thanks to the evisceration of pirates, trade over the Mediterranean was brisk. Principle author of the Declaration of Independence. Third President of the US from — Charles de Gaulle — French leader who offered opposition to the Nazi occupation. Joan of Arc A poor peasant girl who made the most unlikely of leaders. But coming from obscurity, she helped lead the French Dauphin into successful battles against the English.

She had a religious temperament and credited heavenly voices for her instruction and leadership. Seven years after her biography of great leaders, her prophecy of French independence came true. She allowed and financed the journey of Christopher Columbus and also set up the Spanish Inquisition. Queen Victoria — was Queen of England from to her death in During her reign, the British Empire spread across the globe.

Victoria herself was made Empress of India by her prime minister. She came to epitomise a century and maintained close relationships with her Prime Ministers, especially Disraeli. However, her reign proved a stabilising influence, and importantly saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Margaret Thatcher — was British Prime Minister from — She oversaw a period of rapid social and economic change in Britain.

She was a conviction politician, unafraid to speak her mind and pursue her own ideology. Boudicca 1st Century Led British citizens in revolt against the Roman occupation. Initially successful, Boudicca defeated the Romans in minor skirmishes before being defeated. Aung San Suu Kyi — Burmese opposition leader.

Biography of great leaders: Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca

Awarded Nobel peace prize for opposition to military rule. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest for many years due to her political principles. Jesus Christ c.