Fallada hans biography of abraham lincoln
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FiveBooks: Alastair Campbell on Leadership and Winning
A leading thinker recommends five books about their field of interest. This month, the topic is Leadership and Winning, with books chosen by Tony Blair’s former director of communications and strategy, Alastair Campbell. • • You start with this famous study of Abe Lincoln. This is just about the best book on politics I’ve ever read. You have to be a bit careful because with somebody like Lincoln there is such mass of material out there, but what Doris Kearns Goodwin has managed to do is to give it a freshness and a depth that is very rare – it’s an unputdownable historical account. It is called Team of Rivalsbecause it is Lincoln’s story but also the story of the three people who were his rivals for the presidential nomination – it’s their stories all interweaving, plus a fifth main character, this guy Edwin Stanton, who had absolute contempt for Lincoln, as did the others at different levels and at different stages. They just didn’t see him as this great figure that he’s now seen as. He was a backwoods lawyer from Illinois, I think he’d only been one term in the House of Representatives, and he’d lost a couple of elections to the Senate. If you are interested i
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham LincolnDoris Kearns Goodwin
This is just about the best book on politics I’ve ever read. You have to be a bit careful with somebody like Lincoln because there is such mass of material out there, but what Doris Kearns Goodwin has managed to do is to give it a freshness and a depth that is very rare—it’s an unputdownable historical account.
The whole idea about leadership, I think, is not just about the leader, but about the team that you build and how you use the different skills of the people around you. And there are an awful lot of lessons in Lincoln’s story for people in politics today.
Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World Mik Biography: general
Hardback
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Alastair Campbell on Leadership