Leadership

“Leaders,” writes Henry Kissinger in this compelling book, “think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second, between the abiding valúes and aspirations of those they lead. . . . They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. It is this intuitive grasp of direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy.” In Leadership, Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders— Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher—through the distinctive strategies of statccraft that he believes they embodied. To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience, and, because he knew each of the subjects and participated in many of the events he describes, personal knowl-edge. Leadership is enriched by insights and judgments that only Kissinger could make and concludes with his rcflections on world order and the indispensability of leadership today.