Leadership without easy answers

Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the non-profits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who's in charge.

His strategy of leadership applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority - activists as well as presidents, managers as well as workers on the frontline.

Here are Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, in triumph and in tragedy.

Here too are military officers and soldiers, doctors and patients, college students, and local civic groups.