Inte the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis and Clark's Daring Westward Expedition.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: BooksShelf - Book Review

Inte the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis and Clark's Daring Westward Expedition. By Jack Uldrich. Amacom, 246 pages, $24.95.

During this bicentennial celebration of their famed expedition to the West in 1803-06, Lewis and Clark are getting a new jolt of publicity. That, on its face, is the principal marketing hook for Into the Unknown, which looks at the expedition and tries to draw business lessons from it.

Like a host of earlier books that sought to marry historical figures--Lincoln, Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun, to name a few--to business strategies and verities, the result is uneven, ranging from stirring to banal. Talking about how oilcloth could be used as both a sail or for keeping items dry has a lot more relevance to history than it does for teaching today's businesses to focus on flexibility and...