A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

"Five gritty leaders whose extraordinary passion and perseverance changed history... a gripping read on a timeless and timely topic" -- Angela Duckworth, #1 bestselling author of Grit

An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights, Forged in Crisis, by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer Ernest Shackleton; President Abraham Lincoln; legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.

What do such disparate figures have in common? Why do their extraordinary stories continue to amaze and inspire? In delivering the answers to those questions, Nancy Koehn offers a remarkable template by which to judge those in our own time to whom the public has given its trust.

She begins each of the book's five sections by showing her protagonist on the precipice of a great crisis: Shackleton marooned on an Antarctic ice floe; Lincoln on the verge of seeing the Union collapse; escaped slave Douglass facing possible capture; Bonhoeffer agonizing over how to counter absolute evil with faith; Carson racing against the cancer ravaging her in a bid to save the planet. The narrative then reaches back to each person's childhood and shows the individual growing -- step by step -- into the person he or she will ultimately become. Significantly, as we follow each leader's against-all-odds journey, we begin to glean an essential truth: leaders are not born but made. In a book dense with epiphanies, the most galvanizing one may be that the power to lead courageously resides in each of us.

Whether it's read as a repository of great insight or as exceptionally rendered human drama, Forged in Crisis stands as a towering achievement.

• We started tracking this book on October 6, 2017.
• This book was $14.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 9 times in the past 2,868 days.
• The current price of this book is $5.99 last checked one day ago.
• The lowest price to date was $5.99 last reached on August 12, 2025.
• This book has been $5.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $16.99 last reached on November 23, 2020.
• This book has been $16.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• Biographies & MemoirsLeaders & Notable PeopleReligiousChristianity

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 529 Pages
• File Size: 530 KB