A close analysis of five gritty leaders whose extraordinary passion and perseverance changed history. A gripping read on a timeless and timely topic! Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit.

Ten years in the writing, "Forged in Crisis," by renowned Harvard Business School historian and Davos and Aspen Institute speaker Nancy Koehn, presents five remarkable life journeys: those of 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 stories speak to us so powerfully today? Koehn begins each of the book's five sections by showing her protagonist on the precipice of a great crisis: Shackleton marooned on an Antarctic ice floe with no hope of rescue; Lincoln on the verge of the collapse of...