Reviews for Leadership and change

The average rating for Leadership and change based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-09-18 00:00:00 Sorrian Stanos in the interest of full disclosure, i should point out that i'm a big fan of wills. i think he's one of the smartest writers in america today, and i marvel at the depth of his intellect, the beauty of his prose, the range of his curiousity and the discipline of his journalism. wills is almost always interesting, but the value of this volume is two fold. first, one gets to see him as he refines and experiments with his voice. and second, one gets to see his skills treat a variety of topics - sport, politics, religion - all of which he often covers elsewhere in longer works, but gathered here under one roof. the result is dazzling, if at times, slightly dated and obscure (wills' work is always full of references and rarely does an essay go by without at least one latin phrase, but some of the political pieces are so current-to-their-time that the references to operatives are a little more arcane than one would bargain for). and i will add one more valuable reason to read - wills' own comments on his pieces from the hindsight of ten or fifteen years - which adds a fascinating layer to these already brilliantly layered works. in short, a great volume if you are already a fan, or if you want to find a place to introduce yourself to this great essayist.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-16 00:00:00 Melanie Johnson Four stars for some of the pieces in this collection of 1970s journalism: the essay on Nixon's obsession with Alger Hiss, the Jesuitical character analyses of Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Wills is at his "Nixon Agonistes" best here and there. Those of us who weren't following Watergate-era politics closely will need to read this with Wikipedia on hand, since Wills, in writings mainly published in New York Review of Books and other similar periodicals of the time, is constantly dropping obscure names such as Midge Costanza and Bobby Baker. It's interesting to see how journalistic standards have changed since the mid-70s, when Wills, a sophisticated man of letters, thought nothing of referring to a professional football player as a "Bad Nigger" or to Beverly Sills' obsessive fans as a bunch of hysterical homos. I doubt that any editor these days would allow into print a flat-out assertion that Muhammed Ali (sp.) had a "low IQ".