Leadership (Paperback)

Leading New York City is akin to leading a blue whale. At a certain point, the whale chooses its own route. The mayor's job, in part, is about convincing the whale to go somewhere.

Giuliani gained an unusual credibility about leadership ideas during and since the attacks. He had already proven himself as something more capable than LA's mayor as someone who could break out out mediocrity, and more visionary than Chicago's mayor as someone not content with merely maintaining. Giuliani raised the bar, and then jumped it well before September 11 catapulted him into new territory.

Giuliani, like George W Bush, like any American leader, never trained or studied for what response was wisest during a national-level attack. They don't cover this in "how to be a leader" courses. Yet, like Bush, he improvised as best he knew and we saw what muster he could produce. Though almost out of office on September 11, Giuliani demonstrated he was not the lame duck a lesser man might've been.

My trouble with a Giuliani-penned book is not in what he has to say about macro-leadership. He has the right stuff. But part of leadership is in the microleadership.

His personal life publically flailed before our eyes. Granted, his struggle against prostrate cancer is impressive, and I hope in the long run, it is behind him. But his marital failure is scandalous. Bill Clinton's scandal was horrible, but Clinton was ashamed of himself as noted by his Adam and Eve like denials. Giuliani, however, didn't seem to have the same issues. I suspect he's not proud of himself, but, in turn, he seems to not be particularly penitent.

I must recomend this book. It brings insight into a clearly complicated man. He's not the perfect leader, but, despite his personal failures and struggles, he still was a keystone in the rebuilding of America's confidence and of the confidence the world has in America. America is not the perfect country, and is still controversial, but Rudy Giuliani's ability to lead helped fortify the free world's desire to suppress terrorism.

Anthony Trendl

This book, which Giuliani started writing long before September 11, is penned in a highly readable style. "I have always loved to write," Giuliani says in the preface. "As a trial lawyer, I found that my favourite part of the work - and the part I was probably best at - was the final summation. In a way that's what writing a book is."

Although he is now best remembered for September 11 and its aftermath, Time magazine's 'Person of the Year 2001' did not suddenly become a great leader on that fateful day. As this book reveals he had been making hard decisions all his life, revealing another aspect of leadership, the constant sacrificing of short-term popularity for the long-term popularity he now enjoys.

"As federal prosecutor for over a decade as well as two spells in the Justice Department, I became accustomed to people being angry wife me," Giuliani writes. "I thought I was doing a good job as long as their anger was coming from a variety of sources - white collar criminals, mobsters, corrupt politicians, narcotic traffickers. It's not a popularity contest."

This is the essence of Giuliani the man and the politician. Instead of courting a shallow popularity by avoiding difficult decisions, confrontation, and controversy, he faced problems head on as when he tackled New York's legendary crime problems with his now equally legendary 'zero tolerance' approach.

New Yorkers can feel blessed that when the worst terrorist attack in history struck their city, Rudy was the right man at the right time at the right place to handle the crisis.