Books on Leadership
 

Hey all

IM in search of books on leadership. IMnot looking for a "how to" book but more of a narrative. For example books like Rudy Guiliani's newest book, or Jack Welch's straight from the gut. Any siggestions?

You might enjoy an old autobiography by John Masters (copies tend to turn up in used book stores and on net searches) called "Bugles and a Tiger". It tells the story of how a young officer learned about leading men in unusual circumstances. Its set in India in the time just before the second world war but its a great story and I learned a lot from it.

From my own recent experience, when I was recalled to active duty I went through a quick refresher course and in the block of instruction on Leadership the Colonel who was lecturing us on Leadership traits and techniques asked if anyone could provide a brief definition of the subject. He asked several around the room and received various answers some good and some not so good. The answers were long winded and got wrapped up in philosophy and history and psycology but didn't seem to give him what he was looking for. Then he got to me and I gave him the response I learned from my Dad. Sir, Leadership can be defined in two words, FOLLOW ME!

Re: Books on Leadership
 

Guiliani is one of my favorite guys but I wouldn't recommend his book. It's rehashed same old, same old and nothing exciting. I have a signed leather bound that I got as a gift but it's only because it's him that I kept it. Welch's Straight from the gut is a good read but it's not really just a leadership book - a lot of it is pretty much about GE and the superficial coverage of events there.

I'd personally recommend these two books:

The Art of Warfare. This is by far one of the best and it's so good after all this time that it's been taken and applied to different things so you will see "The Art of Warfare for Traders" and they have it for other industries as well. I prefer the original because you can learn to apply it to anything you want afterwards.

The other book I'd recommend is Letters of Yoni http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books That shows it I think. It's about Jonathan Netanyahu (Benjamin's brother) who led the most elite paratrooper unit ever - imagine a top secret commando team that nobody knows, with genius IQs, and incredible physical abilities. He died in the Entebbe raids in operation thunderball. When an Air France jet was hijacked, his group snuck into Uganda (Idi Amin disliked Israel after the country refused to provide him with bombers against Kenya and Tanzania and was one of the men giving orders to murder innocent hostages), pretended to be Idi Amin by riding up to the plane in a black limousine, eliminated a terrorist team as well as Ugandan guards, destroyed a good deal of Uganda's air force, and landed in Kenya shortly after. News had reached France before Israel and Kenya even were informed. Jonathan was one of a few men killed and the raid is now called Operation Jonathan. I can't imagine a hero in this world who can compare to him - an immigrant in the states who overcame a language and cultural barrier, studied at Harvard, enlisted in the Israeli army and fought several wars at the time when the world believed Israel was on its deathbed, a man who read physics during his leisure leave from the military. I have read biographies on so many men and this one. this one is not only about leadership but about being the best. It's not so much just an autobiography - Yoni's life is told through letters he sends home - as much as it shows his inner thinking. It shows you exactly what he dealt with and helps you put your life in proportion to him. It's not as much about just leading other people as it is about empowering the individual. So I don't know if you're looking for that type of thing.

-Rudey
--I can't believe I'm being forced to work on Christmas.

I'm interested in this; is this a contemporary work or is it a translation Sun Tzu's Art of War? I'm guessing there may be a few books with similar titles so want to check. Thanks.

Sun Tzu. There are other flavors for virtually everything imaginable out there, but the first is really beautiful. My version has a few added volumes that they recently unearthed as well as some chapters from Sun Tzu's disciples that were added in for full effect.

-Rudey

Try this book on Gen. George S. Patton's leadership principles:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

This summer im catching up on the reading I didnt have a chance to do during the school year. I was wondering if there are any other books that you all recommend?