The Essential Bennis.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Book review

The Essential Bennis. By Warren Bennis, with Patricia Ward Biederman. Jossey-Bass, 476 pages. $42.99.

Warren Bennis' legacy in the world of leadership theory is perhaps unrivaled. As founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California and the author of 30 books, he's amply earned the right to kick back and reflect on his contributions. The Essential Bennis is a collection of essays he's written over the years--some dating back to the 1960s--that cover a wide variety of philosophies, events and individuals.

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The material is both practically historical and as current as chafing over the recession that clamped its vise on the United States starting in 2008. Bennis ruminates on the sorry state the nation found itself in, arguing that "every decade or so, I find myself writing that we need leaders now as never before."

The book was put together with the help of journalist and longtime collaborator Patricia Ward Biederman and features an interesting element: Commentaries by others, academic and otherwise, about the essay preceding it. These are refreshingly candid and perceptive, and offer far more than simply sugar-coated praise for Bennis' views.

Some of the essays bring readers up to speed on Bennis' formative years and his early academic career, teaching at Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One poignant piece recalls his unhappy years at the State University of Buffalo in New York, when he was recruited by a dynamic president only to find that the turmoil of the late 1960s--and the president's own shortcomings--undid that leader's plans to take the university down a bold new...