Book Club - The Peacemakers: Leadership Lessons From Twentieth-Century Statesmanship

Abstract

Great twentieth century leaders – from all continents of the world -- played vital roles in making our world a fairer, safer and more peaceful place. How did they do it? What lessons can be drawn for our future global agenda? Bruce W. Jentleson shows how these leaders of a variety of types―national, international, institutional, sociopolitical, nongovernmental ― rewrote the zero-sum scripts they were handed and successfully made breakthroughs on issues long thought intractable.

They include Henry Kissinger, Zhou Enlai, and the U.S.-China opening; Mikhail Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War; Dag Hammarskjöld’s exceptional effectiveness as United Nations secretary-general; Nelson Mandela and South African reconciliation; Yitzhak Rabin seeking Arab-Israeli peace; Mahatma Gandhi as exemplar of anticolonialism and an apostle of nonviolence; Lech Walesa and ending Soviet bloc communism; Gro Harlem Brundtland and fostering global sustainability; and a number of others. Jentleson tells us who each leader was as an individual, why they made the choices they did, how they pursued their goals, and what they were (and weren’t) able to achieve.

About the Author

Bruce W. Jentleson is professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, where he served from 2000 to 2005 as director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. He has served as a senior advisor to the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Director; as a foreign policy aide in the U.S. Senate; and as foreign policy advisor to Al Gore during his 2000 presidential campaign. In addition to numerous articles, he is the co-author of The End of Arrogance: America in the Global Competition of Ideas, with Steven Weber.