Forged In Crisis

Download or read book Forged in Crisis written by Nancy Koehn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a portrait of five extraordinary figures--Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rachel Carson--to illuminate how great leaders are made in times of adversity and the diverse skills they summon in order to prevail.

Download or read book Forged in Crisis written by Rudra Chaudhuri and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a fresh and challenging interpretation of India's relationship with the United States over six decades, revealing the complex and distinctive manner in which New Delhi has pursued its interests.

Download or read book A Nation Forged by Crisis written by Jay Sexton and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise new history of the United States revealing that crises -- not unlike those of the present day -- have determined our nation's course from the start In A Nation Forged by Crisis, historian Jay Sexton contends that our national narrative is not one of halting yet inevitable progress, but of repeated disruptions brought about by shifts in the international system. Sexton shows that the American Revolution was a consequence of the increasing integration of the British and American economies; that a necessary precondition for the Civil War was the absence, for the first time in decades, of foreign threats; and that we cannot understand the New Deal without examining the role of European immigrants and their offspring in transforming the Democratic Party. A necessary corrective to conventional narratives of American history, A Nation Forged by Crisis argues that we can only prepare for our unpredictable future by first acknowledging the contingencies of our collective past.

Download or read book Forged in Crisis written by Nancy F. Koehn and published by Portfolio. This book was released on 2014 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you lead frightened people forward to success despite overwhelming odds? Ernest Shackleton should have gone down in history as a failed leader when his 1912 expedition to Antarctica took a dangerous turn. But despite a series of setbacks that left him and his men in life-threatening circumstances, he managed to keep his team moving forward so that they returned home safely. His story is a lesson in staying motivated and reassessing your goals in the wake of failure. In Forged in Crisis, Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn looks at the lives of five exceptional leaders and reveals how they made the tough choices that allowed them to persevere. She examines the inspiring stories of Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, environmentalist Rachel Carson, former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and German Resistance activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer. These extraordinary leaders displayed stunning abilities to exert lasting influence despite turbulence, disruption, and personalities that may have masked their abilities. By examining their individual values, strategies, and trade-offs, she extracts powerful lessons in what it takes to lead and triumph in the face of a crisis.

Download or read book Angela Merkel written by Alan Crawford and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-06-12 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for International Affairs Book of the Year in the Paddy Power Political Book Awards 2014 Angela Merkel was already unique when she became German chancellor: the first female leader of Europe’s biggest economy, the first from former communist East Germany and the first born after World War II. Since 2010, the debt crisis that spread from Greece to the euro region and the world economy has propelled her to center-stage, making Merkel the dominant politician in the struggle to preserve Europe’s economic model and its single currency. Yet the Protestant pastor’s daughter is often viewed as enigmatic and hard-to-predict, a misreading that took hold as she resisted global pressure for grand gestures to counter the crisis. Having turned the fall of the Berlin Wall to her advantage, Merkel is trying to get history on her side again after reaching the fundamental decision to save the euro, the crowning achievement of post-war European unity. Merkel has brought Europe to a crossroads. Germany’s economic might gives her unprecedented power to set the direction for the European Union’s 500 million people. What’s at stake is whether she will persuade them to follow the German lead. Angela Merkel: A Chancellorship Forged in Crisis is the definitive new biography of the world’s most powerful woman. Delving into Merkel’s past, the authors explain the motives behind her drive to remake Europe for the age of globalization, her economic role models and the experiences under communism that color her decisions. For the first time in English, Merkel is fully placed in her European context. Through exclusive interviews with leading policy makers and Merkel confidants, the book reveals the behind-the-scenes drama of the crisis that came to dominate her chancellorship, her prickly relationship with the U.S. and admiration for Eastern Europe. Written by two long-standing Merkel watchers, the book documents how her decisions and vision – both works in progress – are shaping a pivotal moment in European history.

Download or read book The Crisis of American Foreign Policy written by G. John Ikenberry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was George W. Bush the true heir of Woodrow Wilson, the architect of liberal internationalism? Was the Iraq War a result of liberal ideas about America's right to promote democracy abroad? In this timely book, four distinguished scholars of American foreign policy discuss the relationship between the ideals of Woodrow Wilson and those of George W. Bush. The Crisis of American Foreign Policy exposes the challenges resulting from Bush's foreign policy and ponders America's place in the international arena. Led by John Ikenberry, one of today's foremost foreign policy thinkers, this provocative collection examines the traditions of liberal internationalism that have dominated American foreign policy since the end of World War II. Tony Smith argues that Bush and the neoconservatives followed Wilson in their commitment to promoting democracy abroad. Thomas Knock and Anne-Marie Slaughter disagree and contend that Wilson focused on the building of a collaborative and rule-centered world order, an idea the Bush administration actively resisted. The authors ask if the United States is still capable of leading a cooperative effort to handle the pressing issues of the new century, or if the country will have to go it alone, pursuing policies without regard to the interests of other governments. Addressing current events in the context of historical policies, this book considers America's position on the global stage and what future directions might be possible for the nation in the post-Bush era.

Download or read book Crash of the Titans written by Greg Farrell and published by Currency. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of an America icon With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill Lynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing Wall Street to Main Street, setting up offices in far-flung cities and towns long ignored by the giants of finance. With its “thundering herd” of financial advisers, perhaps no other business, whether in financial services or elsewhere, so epitomized the American spirit. Merrill Lynch was not only “bullish on America,” it was a big reason why so many average Americans were able to grow wealthy by investing in the stock market. Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, and sale to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did it happen? And what does this story of greed, hubris, and incompetence tell us about the culture of Wall Street that continues to this day even though it came close to destroying the American economy? A culture in which the CEO of a firm losing $28 billion pushes hard to be paid a $25 million bonus. A culture in which two Merrill Lynch executives are guaranteed bonuses of $30 million and $40 million for four months’ work, even while the firm is struggling to reduce its losses by firing thousands of employees. Based on unparalleled sources at both Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, Greg Farrell’s Crash of the Titans is a Shakespearean saga of three flawed masters of the universe. E. Stanley O’Neal, whose inspiring rise from the segregated South to the corner office of Merrill Lynch—where he engineered a successful turnaround—was undone by his belief that a smooth-talking salesman could handle one of the most difficult jobs on Wall Street. Because he enjoyed O’Neal’s support, this executive was allowed to build up an astonishing $30 billion position in CDOs on the firm’s balance sheet, at a time when all other Wall Street firms were desperately trying to exit the business. After O’Neal comes John Thain, the cerebral, MIT-educated technocrat whose rescue of the New York Stock Exchange earned him the nickname “Super Thain.” He was hired to save Merrill Lynch in late 2007, but his belief that the markets would rebound led him to underestimate the depth of Merrill’s problems. Finally, we meet Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, a street fighter raised barely above the poverty line in rural Georgia, whose “my way or the highway” management style suffers fools more easily than potential rivals, and who made a $50 billion commitment over a September weekend to buy a business he really didn’t understand, thus jeopardizing his own institution. The merger itself turns out to be a bizarre combination of cultures that blend like oil and water, where slick Wall Street bankers suddenly find themselves reporting to a cast of characters straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies. BofA’s inbred culture, which perceived New York banks its enemies, was based on loyalty and a good-ol’-boy network in which competence played second fiddle to blind obedience. Crash of the Titans is a financial thriller that puts you in the theater as the historic events of the financial crisis unfold and people responsible for billion of dollars of other people’s money gamble recklessly to enhance their power and their paychecks or to save their own skins. Its wealth of never-before-revealed information and focus on two icons of corporate America make it the book that puts together all the pieces of the Wall Street disaster.