Failures of Leadership

By: Frederick Parker

Narrated by: Kevin Pierce

Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's Summary

Bad leaders never learn from their mistakes. Better leaders learn from their mistakes. But the best leaders learn from the mistakes of others, so they do not make them themselves.

This exciting new audiobook from historian and entrepreneur Frederick Parker looks at the 20 worst failures of leadership in history and the consequences it meant for those under their rule. Through these entertaining historical snapshots, you will learn about their failures so that you can avoid similar pitfalls on your path to success. This audiobook is useful for business executives, managers, and any other type of organizational leader.

You will learn about...

- Emperor Caligula letting Rome fall into civil war for spending more time inviting his horse to dinner and appointing him senator then tending to the matters of the state

- Sultan Ibrahim I almost bankrupting the Ottoman Empire with his plans to decorate the palace in expensive furs

- Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, an organizational disaster in which he ordered that all harvested crops go to the cities before the villages, resulting in tens of millions of peasants starving

Stories from the lives of these three historical figures and 17 others fill this audiobook. Learn about how they failed their people so spectacularly and what we can learn from their negative examples about successful leadership.

©2013 Frederick Parker (P)2014 Michael Rank

Failure of Scholarship

The audio performance was good, unfortunately the scholarship and content was not. Where was the true discussion of what it means to be a failed (or successful leader)? This is all warmed-over content culled from lots of different sources, but carried no original thoughts forward in examining the topics of failed vs. successful leaders.

This book is well worth reading.

This is a great overview of the worst rulers in history. The author is right on the money.

2 of 4 people found this review helpful