Alan Axelrod

Fourteen lessons to instruct, inspire, and encourage, drawn from the life and work of one of the twentieth century's true leaders.
Gandhi, a CEO? Absolutely—and an incomparable example for our uncertain times, when we need leaders we can trust and admire. Not only was he a moral and intensely spiritual man, but also a supremely practical manager and a powerful agent for change, able to nurture the rebirth of an entire nation.
To...

100 Turning Points in American History is the first in a series of books about the critical decisions, events, inventions, and discoveries that shaped our nation, our world, and our civilization. Each volume presents the stories of 100 decisions/events/ breakthroughs in chronological order and includes, as a special feature, a list of the "Top Ten" ranked in order of impact, with a discussion justifying the ranking. Each decision/event/breakthrough...

An argument settler-and starter-for Civil War buffs who want to know which side had the better soldiers: Armies South, Armies North definitively compares the military forces of both sides. Civil War buffs are always arguing over which side had the better soldiers. Armies South/Armies North by Alan Axelrod helps readers reconsider their understanding of America's most harrowing war. Axelrod is the author of more than one hundred books with a passion...

A surprising and sweeping history that reveals the fur trade to be the driving force behind conquest, colonization, and revolution in early America Combining the epic saga of Hampton Sides's Blood and Thunder with the natural history of Mark Kurlansky's Cod, popular historian Alan Axelrod reveals the astonishingly vital role a small animal-the beaver-played in the creation of our nation. The author masterfully relays a story often neglected by conventional...

With April 12, 2011, set to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, the time is ripe for a new assessment of the conflict's most influential and controversial military leaders. Generals South, Generals North highlights twenty-four such commanders-twelve each from the Confederacy and the Union. Best-selling author and military historian Alan Axelrod presents a biography of each, narrates the major engagements in which...

Fought during 1916, the Battle of the Somme was conceived by the French and British as a great offensive to be waged against Germany even as France poured incredible numbers of men into the slaughterhouse that was the desperate defense of Verdun. The French general-in-chief, Joseph "Papa" Joffre, was especially anxious to go on the offensive. For the French high command cherished the belief, born in the era of Napoleon, that the success of French...

General Patton said, "The soldier is the army." This book says, "People are the war." And even World War II – a conflict of unprecedented scope, magnitude, complexity, and devastation – was the work of individual political leaders, commanders, heroes, and villains. Here are the 30 people who were at the very heart of the world's deadliest and most consequential war, exposed, studied, and ranked according to influence by an author praised as "one...

“Miracle at Belleau Wood” begins in June 1918 at Les Mare Farm in France with just 200 U.S. marines, who spilled their blood to prevail against impossible odds, resisting an overwhelming German force of thousands and turned the battle back against the enemy, saved Paris, saved France, and saved the Allied hope of victory. Called "the Gettysburg of the Great War" by many at the time, it rescued America and its allies from almost certain defeat....

Using the same engrossing anecdotal format that has proved so popular in Profiles in Audacity, Alan Axelrod now turns to the dark side of audacious decision-making: those choices that, in retrospect, were shockingly wrongheaded. Although Axelrod investigates some dumb decisions by stupid people and some evil decisions by evil people, the overwhelming majority of these decisions were made by good, smart people whose poor judgment produced disastrous,...

Alan Axelrod is a Business Week best-selling author. A respected authority on business and management topics, he has also written works of historical biography. In Elizabeth I CEO, his varied skills converge to produce an important book that is both informative and entertaining. When Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558, England was the laughing stock of Europe. Economic, political, and religious calamities were numerous, and Elizabeth endured constant...