Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • 2017
  • Book

Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times

By: Nancy F. Koehn
  • Format:Print
ShareBar

Abstract

An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights that will be of interest to a wide range of readers—including those in government, business, education, and the arts—Forged in Crisis 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, I offer a remarkable template by which to judge those in our own time to whom the public has given its trust. The book’s five sections begin by showing each individual 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.

Keywords

Leadership; Personal Characteristics; Crisis Management; Biography

Citation

Koehn, Nancy F. Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times. New York: Scribner, 2017.
  • Find it at Harvard
  • Purchase

About The Author

Nancy F. Koehn

General Management
→More Publications

More from the Author

    • October 2021
    • GrowthPolicy

    Nancy Koehn on Leadership Lessons from Rep. John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement

    By: Nancy F. Koehn and Devjani Roy
    • Shackleton Journal (blog)

    Why Ernest Shackleton Is Still Relevant Today

    By: Nancy F. Koehn
    • FastCompany.com

    We Need a COVID-19 D-Day—and the Leadership to Execute it

    By: Nancy F. Koehn and Dutch Leonard
More from the Author
  • Nancy Koehn on Leadership Lessons from Rep. John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement By: Nancy F. Koehn and Devjani Roy
  • Why Ernest Shackleton Is Still Relevant Today By: Nancy F. Koehn
  • We Need a COVID-19 D-Day—and the Leadership to Execute it By: Nancy F. Koehn and Dutch Leonard
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College