Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Six of the best books on leadership

Eliane Glaser is a writer, a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University, an associate research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and a BBC radio producer. Her books include Get Real: How to See Through the Hype, Spin and Lies of Modern Life and, most recently, Anti-Politics: On the Demonization of Ideology, Authority and the State.

At the Guardian Glaser tagged six top books on leadership, including:
A similar strategy [--put underlings first in order to maximise their performance--] leads to disaster for the nameless narrator of Daphne du Maurier’s luridly brilliant novel Rebecca. When she moves in to widower Maxim de Winter’s imposing family seat, Manderley, she finds it difficult to give the servants their orders. Rather than rewarding her for her liberal attitude, they are horrified by this breaking of protocol. Unpleasant aspects of class are at work here, but the novel also offers a counterintuitive lesson in the importance of rules and norms, of authority appropriately exercised. Our hapless narrator is overpowered by the precedents of her semi-mythical predecessor, Rebecca, and Manderley burns to the ground.
Read about another entry on the list.

Rebecca appears on Penelope Lively’s list of five of her favorite gardens in literature, Xan Brooks's top ten list of terrible houses in fiction, Tom Easton's top ten list of fictional "houses which themselves seem to have a personality which affects the story," Martine Bailey's list of six of the best marriage plots in novels, Stella Gonet's six best books list, John Mullan's list of ten of the best conflagrations in literature, Tess Gerritsen's list of five favorite thrillers, Mary Horlock's list of the five best psychos in literature, and Derwent May's critic's chart of top country house books.

--Marshal Zeringue