Leadership

I first heard of Giuliani's book while pursuing my undergraduate degree. I was taking a leadership course and the professor suggested it. Rudy preaches the common principles you find in many books, but he offers a real time application for them by providing his own experience. He demonstrates to the reader how and why you must stick to specific leadership principles. Whether or not you like him as a politician, this book will make you respect his superior leadership.

In one sitting I finished 241 pages of the 400+ page book. That hasn't happened since R K Rowlings.

Rudy Giuliani knows leadership. He did the undoable. He transformed New York City, which had become a joke to many Americans, back into one of the greatest cities on Earth. And his leadership helped all the good people in and around New York City, and throughout America, to hold things together during a pre-meditated act of aggression on our Homeland tantamount to an Act of War. Read "Leadership" by Rudy Giuliani, a great friend, mentor, and role-model for all Americans.

He writes it and it's about himself. He talks about his struggles, his strategies, his September 11 experience, and his advice. He talks about his leadership and how he wanted to do things. He gives you suggestions and teaches you how to make the right choices when an unexpected problem stumbles upon you. He talks about making decisions, making rules, putting strategies into use, and much more. Want to how he felt when the unwanted September problem had befallen upon him? Want to know great information in business and making choices? Or are you a leader of some group and you want excellent advice? Well it's for all of you!

It seems everybody on Earth has either written a leadership book (e.g., Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Dell, the Who-Moved-My-Cheese Guy) or had one written about them (e.g., Ghingis Khan, Jesus, Blue's Clues). So it's awfully presumptuous, our great admiration for his last months of leadership as NYC's mayor notwithstanding, for Rudy Giuliani to call his leadership book LEADERSHIP.But what is Rudy Giuliani if not presumptuous, audacious, in-your-face? And, in the final analysis, the book delivers. Big time. There is great advice here, as there is in most books about leadership and management, but the richness of Giuliani's book is the texture, illustrating the points with fascinating "inside" stories from a career that merited giving this kind of advice even if he had not become "our Churchill" after September 11.In fact, one of the great joys of this book, and a great piece of information to remember, is that Giuliani started writing this book well before the events of 9-11. Our lasting image of him is as a universally loved leader and stateman who transcended politics, but Rudy didn't GET to that position by accident. He knew when to fight, when to coddle, when to get tough, when to mend fences, when to take an unpopular position, when to take risks. He was an incredibly effective, though controversial, prosecutor, and an incredibly effective, though controversial, mayor. This book tells you all the stories, and shows you why he was so successful. Absolutely, the September 11 stuff is gripping, maybe the best material we can get our hands on about the event. But this was no quickie project designed to capitalize on the mayor's strength during that crisis.This book was a long time coming, as was Giuliani's performance when the eyes of the world were on him. There is just so much great information, so many great stories, so much good advice, that you'll simultaneously find yourself rushing to take it in, and slowing down to make it last.-Michael Craig