Jeff Darville

"Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes" (Rost, 1993). I love this book, and I wish more people would appreciate it. This book is the defining synopsis of the advent of scholarship on organizational leadership in the 20th century. While he anticipates the final chapter of this era between 1990-2000, and forecasts the next developments in the discipline, this book captures the most important features of leadership studies up to the early 1990's in a robust and concise format. We have moved beyond Joseph Rost in our efforts to study and model leadership, but we will never escape his clear minded understanding of what leadership really is. That is not a trap, it is a tribute to his work on this eternal topic.