Archie Brown has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is The Myth of the Strong Leader.
The Myth of the Strong Leader
Summary
Selected as one of the Best Books of 2016 by Bill Gates All too frequently, leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet, there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership - as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter. In this magisterial and wide-ranging survey of political leadership over the past hundred years, renowned Oxford politics professor Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that strong leaders - meaning those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process - are the most successful and admirable. In reality, only a minority of political leaders will truly make a lasting difference. Though we tend to dismiss more collegial styles of leadership as weak, it is often the most cooperative leaders who have the greatest impact. Drawing on extensive research and decades of political analysis and experience, Brown illuminates the achievements, failures, and foibles of a broad array of 20th century politicians. Whether speaking of redefining leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Margaret Thatcher, who expanded the limits of what was politically possible during their time in power, or the even rarer transformational leaders who played a decisive role in bringing about systemic change - Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela, among them - Brown challenges our commonly held beliefs about political efficacy and strength. Overturning many of our assumptions about the 20th century's most important figures, Brown's conclusions are both original and enlightening. The Myth of the Strong Leader compels us to reassess the leaders who have shaped our world - and to reconsider how we should choose and evaluate those who will lead us into the future.
©2017 Archie Brown (P)2017 Random House Audio
The Rise and Fall of Communism
Summary
From the internationally acclaimed Oxford authority on Communism, a definitive history that examines the origins of the ideology, its development in different nations, its collapse in many of those countries following perestroika, and its current incarnations around the globe. The Rise and Fall of Communism explores how and why Communists came to power; how they were able, in a variety of countries on different continents, to hold on to power for so long; and what brought about the downfall of so many Communist systems. For this comprehensive and illuminating work, Brown draws on more than 40 years of research and on a wealth of new sources. Tracing the story of Communism from its 19th-century roots, Brown explains both its expansion and its decline in the 20th century. Even today, although Communism has been widely discredited in the West, almost a quarter of humanity still lives under its rule.
©2009 Archie Brown (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Human Factor
Summary
In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong.
To understand the significance of the parts played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher in East-West relations in the second half of the 1980s, Brown addresses several specific questions: What were the values and assumptions of these leaders, and how did their perceptions evolve? What were the major influences on them? To what extent were they reflecting the views of their own political establishment or challenging them? How important for ending the East-West standoff were their interrelations? Would any of the realistically alternative leaders of their countries at that time have pursued approximately the same policies?
The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s, and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines - including the division of Europe - removed. Engagement between Gorbachev and Reagan was a crucial part of that process of change. More surprising was Thatcher's role. Regarded by Reagan as his ideological and political soul mate, she formed also a strong and supportive relationship with Gorbachev (beginning three months before he came to power). Promoting Gorbachev in Washington as "[A] man to do business with", she became, in the words of her foreign policy adviser Sir Percy Cradock, "[A]n agent of influence in both directions".
©2020 Archie Brown (P)2020 Random House Audio