Derek Leebaert—historian, strategist, organizational leadership and management consultant, and bestselling author of a series of critically acclaimed books—has written an outstanding and timely new work: Unlikely Heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, His Four Lieutenants, and the World They Made.

In this episode of the Serve to Lead podcast, Leebaert discusses the book, its genesis and its uncanny relevance in our historic moment.

Publisher’s Summary

Only four people served at the top echelon of President Franklin Roosevelt's Administration from the frightening early months of spring 1933 until he died in April 1945, on the cusp of wartime victory. These lieutenants composed the tough, constrictive, long-term core of government. They built the great institutions being raised against the Depression, implemented the New Deal, and they were pivotal to winning World War II.Yet, in their different ways, each was as wounded as the polio-stricken titan. Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, and Henry Wallace were also strange outsiders. Up to 1933, none would ever have been considered for high office. Still, each became a world figure, and it would have been exceedingly difficult for Roosevelt to transform the nation without them. By examining the lives of these four, a very different picture emerges of how Americans saved their democracy and rescued civilization overseas. Many of the dangers that they all overcame are troublingly like those America faces today.

About Derek Leebaert

Derek Leebaert won the biennial 2020 Truman Book Award for Grand Improvisation. His previous books include Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy from Korea to Afghanistan and To Dare and to Conquer: Special Operations and the Destiny of Nations, both Washington Post Best Books of the Year. He was a founding editor of the Harvard/MIT journal International Security and is a cofounder of the National Museum of the U.S. Army. He holds a D.Phil from Oxford and lives in Washington, D.C.

Otherwise he has long been a management consultant, advising enterprises in the IT, defense, and healthcare sectors. He coauthored the MIT Press trilogy on the rise of the information technology revolution, including MIT's The Future of the Electronic Marketplace.

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