Three books that I have found to be excellent reads for leaders are Rudy Giuliani's Leadership, published in 2002, John McCain's Hard Call, published in 2007 and George W. Bush's Decision Points, published last year.

(Disclaimer: I don't take political sides when I talk about political people.  I'm interested in analyzing leadership only.)

What I like about them is that they tell stories.  They are not as much books about leadership as they are books of leadership.  Big difference, I think. 

Some of the leadership revealed is very good and some not so good, but it is there to be seen, dissected and learned from.  Each keeps the pontificating about leadership to a minimum, and instead tells stories that illuminate leadership principles.  I find that much more valuable. 

Senator McCain's is actually not about him at all.  It tells many fascinating stories about different leaders in a variety of professions over the past two hundred or so years. 

One such story reveals that many times the greatest of leaders are those who are forgotten. To wit: 

Walter Reed has an army hospital named after him in Bethesda, Maryland. 

Wikipedia sums up Reed's contribution to society this way: "(Reed) was a U.S. Army physician who in 1900 led the team which postulated and confirmed the theory that yellow fever is transmitted by a particular mosquito species, rather than by direct contact."

That was a monumental discovery.  John McCain, with help from Mark Salter, details the story:

"In addition to Reed, three other doctors traveled to Cuba as part of the commission (to test a Cuban doctor's suspicion that it was the mosquito and not human to human contact that spread yellow fever): U.S. Army physician James Carroll; Cuban-born Aristides Agramonte...and the head physician of clinical research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Jesse Lazear. 

"Of the four, only Lazear strongly suspected that the theory of mosquito infection offered the key to understanding how the disease was spread.

"They subjected dozens of volunteers...to bites from infected mosquitoes.  Three of the commission members-Carroll, Agramonte and Lazear-also volunteered to be infected. All of the volunteers who subsequently contracted the disease ultimately recovered except for one, Lazear, who died after seven days of suffering. 

"Walter Reed is credited with proving the cause of yellow fever, which led to efforts to eradicate mosquito populations and ultimately to a vaccine for the disease.  The army hospital and medical research center in Bethesda, Maryland, is named for him.  Yet as estimable as Reed was, he was the only one of the four doctors on the commission who did not choose to infect himself with the virus. 

"Humanity owes a greater debt to Jesse Lazear for the discovery that would eventually prevent the epidemics that had terrorized cities of North and South America as well as the islands in the Caribbean."

Reed did not "postulate" that mosquitoes carried the disease...that theory was postulated to him.  And the one guy who actually believed the theory volunteered to be infected despite it. And the one who "led the team" and didn't necessarily believe the theory, did not!

Most of the people in history to whom we owe a great debt we've never heard of.  In real life notoriety doesn't assume substance.  Many of history's best leaders remain unknown to us, and that often reveals something good about them-that their cause was more important than their fame and their ego did not trump results.  How I love these people...