CNN senior political analyst & White House advisor to four Presidents David Gergen
Summary: New York Times-best selling author David Gergen - White House adviser to four presidents of different parties, CNN senior political analyst, and founder of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School - presents an inspiring and practical guide for emerging young leaders as well as seasoned change makers. In HEARTS TOUCHED WITH FIRE: How Great Leaders are Made (Simon & Schuster; May 10, 2022; 978-1-9821-7057-8; $29.00 hardcover), he draws on vivid examples from personal experience, history and recent headlines - from Churchill to AOC and dozens more across the public landscape - to shine a light on pathways forward.<br><br> <br><br>Gergen describes himself as a short-term pessimist but a long-term optimist. The next several years are likely to be rough in America, he believes, but the long-term outlook holds much greater promise. Our prospects for success, he argues, now rest heavily upon preparing rising generations for lives of service and leadership.<br><br> <br><br>As a White House adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, Gergen gathered invaluable lessons on leadership that he has shared for more than two decades with students at the Harvard Kennedy School. But he has long hoped to write a book that would spread those lessons more widely. In the past few years, that dream has taken on greater urgency, with growing threats to democracy at home and abroad.<br><br> <br><br>"Who would have believed," Gergen writes, "that for the first time since the Civil War, we would begin tearing ourselves apart? Who would have imagined that our democracy - and long-standing democratic traditions across the world - might be on the brink of collapse? But here we are. It feels as if we are driving on the side of a cliff in the middle of the night with our lights out. We all know it, but we cant seem to stop it."<br><br> <br><br>A Historic Passing of the Torch<br><br> <br><br>What we are witnessing, he notes, is an historic passing of the torch from Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation to Millennials and Gen Zers. The latter two generations, born between 1982 and 2009, are the biggest and diverse cohort in our history - and will soon be the most powerful. They have faced profound challenges in just the first two decades of the 21st century - including terrorism, deep recessions, climate disasters, racial and gender inequities, a deadly global pandemic and a poisonous polarization of our politics.<br><br> <br><br>The Millennials and Gen Zers are changing the face of leadership in many ways. Gergen shows how in the journeys of climate activist Greta Thunberg, the Parkland students fighting for gun sanity, Pakistani female education advocate Malala, and the organizers of the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. They are leading from the bottom up as well as the top down, skillfully using the power of social media and protest marches. Their experiments in leadership have brought out the biggest numbers in history in protests over women's rights, racial equity, voter suppression, gun rights and gay rights.<br><br> <br><br>Even as ways to exercise leadership are evolving, Gergen points out, some qualities and skills remain eternal. Courage and character, for example, have been prerequisites for great leadership through millennia, from the classical Greeks and Romans down to Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Gergen worked early in the White House for both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Both had courage but the first lacked character and was driven out by scandal; the second was a man of character who looks better and better through the rear view mirror.<br><br> <br><br>The Leader's Journey: Inner and Outer<br><br> <br><br>Gergen begins with a consideration of some of the most profound questions in understanding leadership. Does leadership really matter, after all? Why do we need great leaders? What are their most important qualities or...
