Item #7858 The Power to Lead: The Crisis of the American Presidency. James MacGregor BURNS.

The Power to Lead: The Crisis of the American Presidency.

New York: Simon and Schuster, [1984]. Hardcover. Small 4to. Black cloth spine with silver lettering and tan paper over boards, pictorial dust jacket. 288pp. Near fine/near fine. Item #7858
ISBN: 0671427318

Handsome first edition, with choice autograph addition: Tipped to front flyleaf is an outstanding-content Typed Letter Signed from Burns, 1p, 8½" X 11", Williamstown, MA, 17 March 1982. Addressed to noted Lincoln scholar Arnold F. Gates (1914-93). Near fine. Faint original folds. On "Williams College" letterhead, Burns writes provocatively on Lincoln's leadership, in part: "You raise such a basic question about Lincoln that I cannot do justice to it in a letter. Actually, I am still trying to sort out my own views of Lincoln, especially since I deal with him at the start of the second volume of 'The American Experiment.' On the one hand, I am impressed by his superb political operationalism and by his ability to couch the reasons for his actions in such noble words. On the other hand, I am not sure what grade to give to a man who essentially, as I see it, operated brilliantly amid multiple political and moral pressures, but did not, it seemed to me, for a long time raise the whole struggle to the moral dimension that was required by the price paid in the Civil War. I any event, I will pursue my wonderings and reflections on all this and am properly influenced by your own remarks." He continues, "Perhaps I could put my own view more succinctly by saying that I believe that, along with the kind of brilliant transactional leadership that Lincoln represented, there is a place for transforming leadership, a distinction I tried to develop in a book I wrote a few years ago on leadership...." Boldly signed in full in black ink.

Price: $75.00

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