The Top 10 Books to REALLY Learn About Leadership

I just attended the 21st annual National Leadership Symposium at the University of Richmond, which is an intensive 3-day workshop for directors and faculty/academic staff who are running university-based leadership programs. I was one of three faculty scholars who presented throughout the conference, and I was asked many very good questions. The one question that really stumped me was, "If someone really wanted to get a good grasp on the academic field of leadership, which books would you recommend?" I can't believe that I was blindsided by a question that I should have been well prepared to answer. [Moreover, I can't believe that I haven't been asked this question before!]
So, here is my list of books that will give an educated person a good grasp of the study of leadership and what we have learned from over 100 years of leadership research. Realize that these are academic books, not the easy-to-digest popular books on leadership.
1. Bass's Handbook of Leadership (4th edition). Authors: Bernard M. Bass with Ruth Bass (2008). New York: Free Press.
This is the "bible" for serious students of leadership. No one knew more about leadership than the late Bernie Bass, whose research career spanned 7 decades. At more than 1500 pages, this is the most comprehensive treatment of leadership research that exists.
2. Leadership. Author: James MacGregor Burns. (1978). New York: Harper Collins.
Presidential scholar and biographer, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Jim Burns, wrote this inspirational book that distinguished between what he called "transforming" and "transactional" leaders. It led to the development of the theory of transformational leadership, spawned thousands of research studies, and helped revive (and diversify) the study of leadership.
3. The Nature of Leadership. (2nd edition). Editors: David V. Day & John Antonakis. (2011). SAGE press.
This new edited book gives a scholarly, in-depth review of the core areas of leadership research in management and psychology. The collection provides a good "base" for understanding the latest empirical research on leadership.
4. Organizational Culture and Leadership. (4th edition). Author: Edgar H. Schein. (2010). Jossey Bass.

This book is more about organizational culture and how leaders can affect and are affected by culture. Schein's foundational work in psychology, organizational development, and leadership provides breadth to the understanding of leadership and the larger context of organizational leadership.
5. The Practice of Leadership. Editors: Jay A. Conger & Ronald E. Riggio (2007). Jossey-Bass.
This book brought together the leading scholars in each area of leadership research, from leader selection to leader development, to leading teams and leading under crisis. Each chapter author draws on the research to give practicing leaders brief takeaways to help them be more effective.
Best Guide to Personal Leader Development
6. Full Range Leadership Development. (2nd edition). Author: Bruce J. Avolio. SAGE press.
Avolio is one of the top leadership scholars. This guide to personal leader development is steeped in research and in Avolio's own consulting work and life experiences. It shows that leadership is complex and development is hard to do, but clearly lays out the path to leadership development.
Best Collected Readings on Leadership (Tie)
7. The Leader's Companion. Editor: J. Thomas Wren. (1995). Free Press. & Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence. Editor: Barbara Kellerman. (2010). McGraw-Hill.
An older and a new collection of classic writings on leadership, both with editor introductions and explanatory text.
Best Leadership Textbooks
8-10. Leadership: Science & Practice. (5th edition) (2010). Author: Peter Northouse. SAGE press.
Leadership in Organizations. (7th edition). (2009). Author: Gary Yukl. Prentice-Hall.
Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. (7th edition). (2010). Richard L. Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
These are the 3 best texts in leadership that I have found, with Northouse being more accessible (and briefer), Yukl more business-oriented and academic, and Hughes, et al., is more like a traditional textbook with exercises.

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told.
In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
Engineers call feathers the most efficient insulating material ever discovered, and they are at the root of biology's most enduring debate. They silence the flight of owls and keep penguins dry below the ice. They have decorated queens, jesters, and priests. And they have inked documents from the Constitution to the novels of Jane Austen.
Feathers is a captivating and beautiful exploration of this most enchanting object.

Winner-Take-All Politics

Author: Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

A groundbreaking work that identifies the real culprit behind one of the great economic crimes of our time— the growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the richest of the rich.
We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven't. In fact, the exorbitantly paid have continued to thrive during the current economic crisis, even as the rest of Americans have continued to fall behind. Why do the "haveit- alls" have so much more? And how have they managed to restructure the economy to reap the lion's share of the gains and shift the costs of their new economic playground downward, tearing new holes in the safety net and saddling all of us with increased debt and risk? Lots of so-called experts claim to have solved this great mystery, but no one has really gotten to the bottom of it—until now.
In their lively and provocative Winner-Take-All Politics, renowned political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate convincingly that the usual suspects—foreign trade and financial globalization, technological changes in the workplace, increased education at the top—are largely innocent of the charges against them. Instead, they indict an unlikely suspect and take us on an entertaining tour of the mountain of evidence against the culprit. The guilty party is American politics. Runaway inequality and the present economic crisis reflect what government has done to aid the rich and what it has not done to safeguard the interests of the middle class. The winner-take-all economy is primarily a result of winner-take-all politics.
In an innovative historical departure, Hacker and Pierson trace the rise of the winner-take-all economy back to the late 1970s when, under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, a major transformation of American politics occurred. With big business and conservative ideologues organizing themselves to undo the regulations and progressive tax policies that had helped ensure a fair distribution of economic rewards, deregulation got under way, taxes were cut for the wealthiest, and business decisively defeated labor in Washington. And this transformation continued under Reagan and the Bushes as well as under Clinton, with both parties catering to the interests of those at the very top. Hacker and Pierson's gripping narration of the epic battles waged during President Obama's first two years in office reveals an unpleasant but catalyzing truth: winner-take-all politics, while under challenge, is still very much with us.
Winner-Take-All Politics—part revelatory history, part political analysis, part intellectual journey— shows how a political system that traditionally has been responsive to the interests of the middle class has been hijacked by the superrich. In doing so, it not only changes how we think about American politics, but also points the way to rebuilding a democracy that serves the interests of the many rather than just those of the wealthy few.

The Decline and Fall of the American Republic

Author: Bruce Ackerman

The author shows how the institutional dynamics of the last half-century have transformed the American presidency into a potential platform for political extremism and lawlessness. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the War on Terror are only symptoms of deeper pathologies. ­Ackerman points to a series of developments that have previously been treated independently of one another—from the rise of presidential primaries, to the role of pollsters and media gurus, to the centralization of power in White House czars, to the politicization of the military, to the manipulation of constitutional doctrine to justify presidential power-grabs. He shows how these different transformations can interact to generate profound constitutional crises in the twenty-first century—and then proposes a series of reforms that will minimize, if not eliminate, the risks going forward.
The book aims to begin a new constitutional debate. Americans should not suppose that Barack Obama’s centrism and constitutionalism will typify the presidencies of the twenty-first century. We should seize the present opportunity to confront deeper institutional pathologies before it is too late.

The Shadows of Consumption Consequences for the Global Environment

Author: Peter Dauvergne

The Shadows of Consumption gives a hard-hitting diagnosis: many of the earth's ecosystems and billions of its people are at risk from the consequences of rising consumption. Products ranging from cars to hamburgers offer conveniences and pleasures; but, as Peter Dauvergne makes clear, global political and economic processes displace the real costs of consumer goods into distant ecosystems, communities, and timelines, tipping into crisis people and places without the power to resist.

In The Shadows of Consumption, Peter Dauvergne maps the costs of consumption that remain hidden in the shadows cast by globalized corporations, trade, and finance. He traces the environmental consequences of five commodities: automobiles, gasoline, refrigerators, beef, and harp seals. In these fascinating histories we learn, for example, that American officials ignored warnings about the dangers of lead in gasoline in the 1920s; why China is now a leading producer of CFC-free refrigerators; and how activists were able to stop Canada's commercial seal hunt in the 1980s (but are unable to do so now).

Dauvergne's innovative analysis allows us to see why so many efforts to manage the global environment are failing even as environmentalism is slowly strengthening. He proposes a guiding principle of "balanced consumption" for both consumers and corporations. We know that we can make things better by driving a fuel-efficient car, eating locally grown food, and buying energy-efficient appliances; but these improvements are incremental, local, and insufficient. More crucial than our individual efforts to reuse and recycle will be reforms in the global political economy to reduce the inequalities of consumption and correct the imbalance between growing economies and environmental sustainability.

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

Author: Geoff Colvin

One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called “What It Takes to Be Great.” Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field--from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch--are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades.

And not just plain old hard work, like your grandmother might have advocated, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness.

Now Colvin has expanded his article with much more scientific background and real-world examples. He shows that the skills of business—negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest—obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort. Even the hardest decisions and interactions can be systematically improved.

This new mind-set, combined with Colvin’s practical advice, will change the way you think about your job and career—and will inspire you to achieve more in all you do

The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress

Author: Joel Mokyr
In a world of supercomputers, genetic engineering, and fiber optics, technological creativity is ever more the key to economic success. But why are some nations more creative than others, and why do some highly innovative societies--such as ancient China, or Britain in the industrial revolution--pass into stagnation?
Beginning with a fascinating, concise history of technological progress, Mokyr sets the background for his analysis by tracing the major inventions and innovations that have transformed society since ancient Greece and Rome. What emerges from this survey is often surprising: the classical world, for instance, was largely barren of new technology, the relatively backward society of medieval Europe bristled with inventions, and the period between the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution was one of slow and unspectacular progress in technology, despite the tumultuous developments associated with the Voyages of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution.
What were the causes of technological creativity? Mokyr distinguishes between the relationship of inventors and their physical environment--which determined their willingness to challenge nature--and the social environment, which determined the openness to new ideas. He discusses a long list of such factors, showing how they interact to help or hinder a nation's creativity, and then illustrates them by a number of detailed comparative studies, examining the differences between Europe and China, between classical antiquity and medieval Europe, and between Britain and the rest of Europe during the industrial revolution. He examines such aspects as the role of the state (the Chinese gave up a millenium-wide lead in shipping to the Europeans, for example, when an Emperor banned large ocean-going vessels), the impact of science, as well as religion, politics, and even nutrition. He questions the importance of such commonly-cited factors as the spill-over benefits of war, the abundance of natural resources, life expectancy, and labor costs.
Today, an ever greater number of industrial economies are competing in the global market, locked in a struggle that revolves around technological ingenuity. The Lever of Riches, with its keen analysis derived from a sweeping survey of creativity throughout history, offers telling insights into the question of how Western economies can maintain, and developing nations can unlock, their creative potential.

THE TENTH PARALLEL Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam

Author: Eliza Griswold
The tenth parallel—the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator—is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide. More than half of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims live along the tenth parallel; so do sixty percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians. Here, in the buzzing megacities and swarming jungles of Africa and Asia, is where the two religions meet; their encounter is shaping the future of each faith, and of whole societies as well.

An award-winning investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent the past seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in The Tenth Parallel show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local and tribal issues are often shaped by religious ideas. Above all, she makes clear that, for the people she writes about, one’s sense of God is shaped by one’s place on earth; along the tenth parallel, faith is geographic and demographic.

An urgent examination of the relationship between faith and worldly power, The Tenth Parallel is an essential work about the conflicts over religion, nationhood and natural resources that will remake the world in the years to come.

The Big Questions: The Universe

Author: Stuart Clark
The Big Questions series enables renowned experts to tackle the 20 most fundamental and frequently asked questions of a major branch of science or philosophy. Each 3000-word essay simply and concisely examines a question that has eternally perplexed enquiring minds, providing answers from history's great thinkers. This ambitious project is a unique distillation of humanity's best ideas. In Big Questions: The Universe, Dr Stuart Clark tackles the 20 key questions of astronomy and cosmology: What is the universe? How big is the universe? How old is the universe? What are stars made from? How did the Universe form? Why do the planets stay in orbit? Was Einstein right? What are black holes? How did the Earth form? What were the first celestial objects? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? Are we really made from stardust? Is there life on Mars? Are there other intelligent beings? Can we travel through time and space? Can the laws of physics change? Are there alternative universes? What will be the fate of the universe? Is there cosmological evidence for God?

Stuart Clark's top 10 approachable astronomy books

1. The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy

Part science, part travel book. Ananthaswamy searches for cosmological truth by visiting the often remote observatories and laboratories studying the universe. Ultimately, this story is an enchanting exploration of the author's quest to understand not just a little more about the universe, but a little more about his own place within it.

2. Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel

The most dramatic retelling of the Galileo story for a generation, and a rather tragic tale to boot. Sobel's memorable prose relies on letters between Galileo and his oldest daughter, a nun, to shine new light on the iconic astronomer. A masterful blend of history and astronomy.

3. The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich

Gingerich's compelling narrative illuminates his quest to explore the cultural reception of Copernicus's revolutionary idea that the Earth orbited the sun and not vice versa. Gingerich also relates the difficulties of being an American researcher during the cold war, knowing that his quarry lay behind the iron curtain.

4. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos by Dennis Overbye

This extended piece of top-class journalism captures astronomy as it is really practised in the corridors of academia and the lecture halls of conferences. Personal rivalries and personalities have as much to do with "progress" as having the right answer. Sprawling, complex and epic, it is also a page-turner.

5. Project Orion by George Dyson

How far will man go to reach the stars? Back in the 1950s, idealism was running high and a group of scientists and engineers gathered at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Their goal was to harness nuclear bombs to launch manned spacecraft. Utter madness but beautifully recounted by George Dyson, whose father was one of the misguided idealists.

6. Dragonfly by Bryan Burrough

Manned spaceflight rather than astronomy, but a vivid behind-the-scenes portrayal of America's participation in Russia's Mir space station. It strips away the PR gloss and builds a factual story that reads likes a near-future thriller. Gripping, with some genuinely jaw-dropping moments of drama.

7. The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler

Dense and detailed, this is a book you may have to work at, but there are rich rewards for anyone who stays the course. It also grows better with each re-reading. Koestler weaves the greatest history of astronomy up to Newton ever written.

8. Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife

Forget matter and energy, space and time, Seife argues that the most fundamental property of the universe is the information it contains. Until we accept this, we are stymied from further progress, rather like a baby playing with the box instead of the gift inside. Provocative and interesting, it challenges you to think differently.

9. The Very First Light by John C Mather and John Boslough

A thrilling tale of big science within Nasa, this is the story behind the mission that discovered the "seeds" of today's galaxies in the faint glow of the very first light left over from the creation of the universe.

10. Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S Thorne

A fantastic tale of the consequences of relativity rather than the development of it. Black holes are predicted by relativity and are the weirdest things imaginable, so weird that astronomers tried for decades to wish them away. Even today, they still don't know what they are. Cracking story, cracking science.