'A marvellous banquet with four leaders whose lives provide lessons for all. Pull up a chair' Warren Buffett

***'***It is a safe bet that Leadership will soon sit on the nightstand of every chief executive officer in the land and will be avidly read by the legion of ambitious young people who want their jobs' Niall Ferguson, Sunday Times

In this culmination of five decades of work, Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the origin, growth and exercise of leadership through the lives of four US presidents

Are leaders born or made? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man?

In Leadership, acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin looks at four presidents - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson - to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves, and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking at their entry into public life and how they confronted the dilemmas of their times, we can follow their development into leaders of their time.

These stories of leadership in fractured times take on a singular urgency in today's polarized world and provide a much-needed roadmap for aspiring and established leaders.

'Colourful, fun and illuminating . . . a master storyteller' Daniel Finkelstein, The Times