Lives of Moral Leadership [Hardcover]

Robert Coles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2000

In this rich and illuminating book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author Robert Coles creates a portrait of moral leadership--what it is, and how it is achieved--through stories of people who have led and inspired him: Robert Kennedy, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Erik Erikson, a Boston bus driver, teachers in college, medical school, and elementary school, among others.

Coles tells how to be a moral leader and shows how the intervention of one person can change the course of history, as well as influence the day-to-day quality of life in our homes, schools, communities, and nation. We need to "hand one another along" in life, says Coles, quoting his friend Walker Percy, and in Lives of Moral Leadership he explores how each of us can be engaged in a continual and mutual life-giving process of personal and national leadership development. Coles discusses how the actions of the American president affect the way people feel about themselves and the country, and-citing the influence of Shakespeare's Henry V on Robert Kennedy, and of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina on his own mother--explains how reading literature can motivate action and growth. The way in which moral leaders emerge today, and for all time, comes vividly to light in this brilliant book by one of America's finest teachers and writers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Here is another book that has its origin in the impeachment of President Clinton. Yet Robert Coles, a noted psychiatrist, bestselling author (The Moral Intelligence of Children), and Pulitzer Prize winner (Children of Crisis), does not deliver a polemicized account of those days. Instead, he tries to describe moral exemplars--something he thinks his country desperately requires:

We need heroes, people who can inspire us, help shape us morally, spur us on to purposeful action--and from time to time we are called on to be those heroes, leaders for others, either in a small, day-to-day way, or on the world's larger stage. At this time in America, and in the rest of the world, we seem to need moral leadership especially, but the need for moral inspiration is ever present.

Coles writes about Robert F. Kennedy (whom he knew personally), Shakespeare's Henry V (who had an influence on RFK, reports Coles), the literature of Conrad and Tolstoy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dorothy Day--even Al Jones, a black bus driver in Boston during that city's school desegregation controversy. The book's bottom-line message is an encouraging one: moral leaders are important, and they may be present in places where we don't normally go looking for them. "Moral leadership as we study it in history and politics (from the distance of time and events we never get to see or learn about in any detail) is also moral leadership that can happen right in front of us or not far away," notes Coles, quoting the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. We look up to political leaders all the time--or at least try to, or think we should. "But we also constantly look to one another, to uphold for one another various suppositions and ideals, to hand one another along, morally as well as psychologically," writes Coles (this time in his own words, with allusion to Walker Percy). In the end, Lives of Moral Leadership is a plea that all of us can become moral leaders--and many of us must. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly

In a collection that ranges from vague to incisive, Coles (Children of Crisis; The Moral Intelligence of Children; etc.) presents true stories and reflections about moral leaders and what distinguishes them as such. Drawing heavily on recorded interviews, the Pulitzer Prize-winning psychiatrist and Harvard ethics professor profiles moral leaders he has known. Uniting all of his subjects is "moral courage"Atheir ability to know who they are and what they believe in, and to take action they believe is right and necessary to instruct and influence others (Coles quotes Erik Erikson, who said, "There's leadership in action"). Some are famous for their moral heroismARobert Kennedy, Dorothy Day and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Others are not well known, such as Albert Jones, a janitor who volunteered to drive a bus taking African-American children to previously all-white Boston schools. Coles also examines the moral content of writers, including William Shakespeare and Joseph Conrad, and illustrates how his teacher, Perry Miller, helped him "make connections" between books and life. Finally, he examines how indiscretions or bad decisions by people deemed moral leaders, like President Clinton, affect their ability to lead or for others to continue to view them as leaders. The book is marred by woolly writing and overanalysis of minutiae (e.g., the phrase "hit home" is dissected to mean "take up residence in the contemplative sector of our thinking life"), and Coles never fully explains how moral leadership differs from leadership plain and simple. But he excels at oral history, at getting people of action to reflect for the record, and he successfully honors his subjects (most of whom are left of center, a counterbalance to the recent right-wing dominance of the public discussion of morality) and offers the reader much to reflect on. Agent, Amanda Urban. 3-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (October 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375501088
• ISBN-13: 978-0375501081
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #488,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Coles is professor emeritus at Harvard University and the author of numerous books, including his series Children of Crisis, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. He has also won a MacArthur Award, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a National Humanities Medal. He lives in Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book. Tiresome Sentences, October 10, 2000

By 

Jim Street (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lives of Moral Leadership (Hardcover)

I agree with the Washington Post Book World assessment that Robert Coles should be declared a "national treasure." For years his writing have shown him to be a man of compassion with a heart for the oppressed and downtrodden as well as for the children who are often so easily overlooked in our society.

Coles new book "Lives of Moral Leadership" is also a national treasure. I think it is important not only for the insights it provides concerning moral leadership but also because of its behind the scenes glimpse of historic events that shaped the American character in the latter part of the 20th century.

In the book, Coles displays the tensions inherent in moral leadership including the tensions of inherent moral force and political pragmatism, the leader as hero and also as one who must garner the consent of his/her followers, wisdom and innocence, and "standing apart" in order to give courage to others.

The book is a collection of narratives and reflections. Much of the material is drawn from Coles interviews with such people as Robert Kennedy, Dorothy Day, and Danilo Dolci. The reader is asked to do a good bit of reflecting based upon the stories Coles tells.

My only complaint about the book has to do with Coles style of writing. While his style is clear in most instances, he has a tendency to launch into never ending sentences. Me thinks he sometimes feels "he will be heard for his much speaking." Every so often you will want to say, "Robert, a period costs no more than a semi-colon, dash, colon and parentheses."

The chapter on Dorothy Day is worth the price of the book and is a wonderful of example of someone who tried to stay faithful to the leading of God as well as to the wisdom of community.

Great book. Tiresome sentences at times.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moral Leaders Beget Moral Leaders, and Beget a Moral World, October 9, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lives of Moral Leadership (Hardcover)

The book clearly deserves more than 5 stars.

Dr. Coles is helping us see "circles of human moral connectedness growing, touching, informing the lives of individuals and of the communities to which we belong."

This is the most insightful book on moral leadership that I have read. That success builds on giving you an inside-out examination of how moral leaders developed their perspectives, how their words and deeds affected others, and how moral progress ensued. Professor Coles was able to do this by heavily drawing on people and situations he knew personally, so that you get many lovely nuances of how moral leadership has worked in his life through civil rights and humanitarian examples.

The book opens with a lengthy anecdote about how Robert Kennedy (when he was a Senator) worked with a group of Doctors, including the author, to develop the food stamp program. The physicians would have been satisfied with venting their moral outrage at hunger in America and going home. Kennedy helped them understand that they could accomplish much more by matching their indignation to the practical matters of influencing others. The author often thought that Kennedy was not being sincere as these lessons were being given, but later came to realize that Kennedy had given them all and the nation a great gift of moral leadership.

Unlike most books about leadership, this one talks about ordinary people as well. Those examples speak louder to us, if you are like me, because they describe situations where we are likely to find ourselves, and can draw practical inspiration. I was especially interested in how the Tomasellos encouraged Mr. Thomas (a black man) to go after the vote in the South, Elaine Vogel's efforts to develop her white students' moral sensibilities during the school integration years in New Orleans, and Al Jones' example in encouraging busing in Boston (both by speech, becoming a bus driver, and using the bus rides to provide moral lessons for the embattled black students).

Many anecdotal books seem to have no point, but Dr. Coles has created one here that gives you the rich detail necessary to make the points for yourself. The lessons you learn from your self-examination will stay with you more than if he continually made all of the points for you. This is a greater gift of moral leadership than a traditional book attempts.

Clearly, moral leadership has many roots, and each is examined in detail through the cases here. The most important ones seem to be in literature (such as Conrad's heroes), the examples of great moral leaders (such as Gandhi), and the supportive reactions we get to efforts at moral leadership (as when someone tells us we should go ahead). We can each stimulate much more moral leadership by reading literature about moral leadership, sharing what we learn with others and encouraging them to read the same literature, reading about the lives of moral leaders and sharing those lessons and encouraging similar reading, encouraging the moral observations and actions of others, and by being a good example in taking moral stands and actions. I came away with a sense that the amount of moral leadership could be greatly expanded if each person simply absorbed and acted on the major lessons of this book.

If you are moved by this book, I suggest that you develop your moral consciousness by looking for places every day where you can share what you learned with younger people. In that way, you can have the most influence for the longest time, and help create a magnificent legacy for your own life.

Create more goodness!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Grad. Gift, May 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Lives of Moral Leadership (Hardcover)

Coles does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of morality in our every day life. This book is a great gift for any graduate (or anyone), allowing the reader to fully understand that just as our teachers, Senators, and even bus drivers should me moral, we too are called upon to be moral to others. It is a great book for anyone looking to get inspired about a couse. I loved it.