SWNID is anxiously awaiting an opportunity to read Joshua Wolf Shenk's Lincoln's Melancholy. A summary of the book was featured a month ago in the indispensable Atlantic Monthly, and that much at least should be read by all gentle readers. Or at the very least gentle readers disinclined to read should listen to the NPR interview with Shenk and then maybe consent to read the excerpt from the book on the NPR web site.
Lincoln is forever a fascinating and challenging figure. But the frequency of clinical depression in all cultures and generations and the potential strength that those who have overcome it can bring to others are so great that they make Lincoln even more fascinating and challenging, not to mention worth thinking about more.
As we look to the buoyant, decisive, confident (or arrogant, as SWNID looks inward) and gregarious to lead us, we should ask where we might go if we looked more to the sensitive and burdened. Lincoln may have been all these, but today he would never be considered for significant leadership because he is the latter as well as the former.
And then there's another book to be read, The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership by University of Spoiled Children President Steven B. Sample, who is also a serious-minded Christian. Recently reviewed in Leadership magazine, this book, per SWNID's contacts, takes leadership out of Donald Trump's office and puts it back in the intellectual's study.
Just as soon as I get my desk cleared ...
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