Forged in Crisis

July 17, 2017
Harvard Business School historian Koehn has compiled an enthralling, if too loosely organized, look at five people who changed the world through sacrifice, courage, and conviction. Her first work of popular nonfiction gathers together stories about her subjects as illustrations of “courageous leadership.” She details Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to the South Pole, Abraham Lincoln’s tumultuous presidency, Frederick Douglass’s activism in the burgeoning abolitionist movement, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s resistance against the Nazi party, and Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking ecological polemic, Silent Spring. She follows their lives, work, and difficult decisions; their challenges and their triumphs. Koehn shows that one important quality that set these leaders apart was their ability to guide others toward doing good. However, the premise for linking them together is slim: the main thematic thread Koehn finds, besides do-gooding and modeling virtue, is a stern commitment to self-improvement. Nonetheless, the individual stories add up to a fascinating look at a varied group of heroes, and Koehn’s call for her audience to emulate them strikes a pleasingly hopeful note for an era of partisan discord and lack of faith in leaders. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME Entertainment.