Leadership Lessons From Willy Loman

JOSEPH L. BADARACCO JR.'S THESIS IS SIMPLE: You can learn about leadership from literature. From Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman." From Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer." And, among others, Sophocles' "Antigone." Serious literature, Badaracco

The Harvard Business School professor poses lots of questions about character and leadership and offers fewer answers as he discusses eight quite different works of the world's literature. This is as it should be, for his book is about gaining greater understanding and, as Badaracco also says in the introduction, "literature gives us only one window on leadership."

This is a book business executives need to read away from the office-not because it lacks relevance to their everyday work but because it profoundly relates to their jobs and to them as human beings, and it requires a serious commitment of time for study and reflection. The difference between success and failure as a leader "is not skill, technique, credentials, networking, or even experience," asserts Badaracco. "It is clarity about who one is."

-JOHN S. MCCLENAHEN