Category Archives: Our latest books on HEROIC LEADERS

Reel Heroes & Villains

Our latest books on HEROIC LEADERS, , , ,

ReelHVfrontcoverWhat makes a good movie hero? Which kinds of villains are the best — or the worst?

In Reel Heroes & Villains, Scott Allison and Greg Smith present a new way of understanding movie heroes and villains. This book is already an Amazon Number One Best Seller. Inside this book you’ll find:amazon-bestseller

  • A new innovative model of heroes & villains in the movies
  • The key to good characters in the movies: Transformation
  • The Eight Great Arcs of transformations in heroes and villains
  • How heroes and villains transform morally, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically
  • How the hero’s journey differs from the villain’s journey
  • 52 reviews of movie heroes and villains in 2014

Reel Heroes & Villains is scheduled for release on August 15, 2015.

Here’s what people are saying about Reel Heroes & Villains:

“Allison and Smith have deftly crafted THE premier text of heroes and villains in contemporary cinema. A shiny portrait that brilliantly dissects the hero-villain dichotomy through a dense mixture of passion, knowledge, and humor to offer profound insights into the hero-villain relationship.”

— Jason Roy, The Hero Construction Company

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“A daring model of heroism and villainy. Allison and Smith’s analysis forever changes the way we view movie characters.”

— Dr. Robert Giacalone, Professor of Business Ethics, University of Denver

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“A must-read for all fans of heroes and villains in the movies.”

– Dr. James Beggan, Professor of Sociology, University of Louisville

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“Those mad geniuses, Allison and Smith, are back. Here are the secrets of the villains you love to hate, by the writers you love to read. Cinema’s worst villains are no match for Allison and Smith.”

— Rick Hutchins, Author of The RH Factor

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“A dive into the minds of those you love to hate. Allison and Smith examine the shadowy reflection of heroism.”

— Jesse Schultz, Author of Alfheim

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“A revolutionary way of understanding heroes and villains in the movies. This book is Allison and Smith’s tour de force.”

– Dr. James Beggan, University of Louisville

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Conceptions of Leadership: Enduring Ideas and Emerging Insights

Our latest books on HEROIC LEADERS

Conceptions of Leadership gathers together the latest work by distinguished leadership scholars in social psychology and related disciplines to explore classic conceptions of leadership.

The book reviews topics such as interpersonal influence, charisma, personality, and power, as well as recent perspectives on those enduring concerns. It includes contemporary departures from traditional approaches to leadership in considering gender, trust, narratives, and the complex relationships between leaders and followers. Together the chapters provide a wide-ranging and coherent account of how human beings get along and the ways they engage and work together to accomplish their goals.

Conceptions of Leadership is edited by George Goethals, Scott Allison, Rod Kramer, and David Messick. Here is an excerpt, taken from David Messick’s opening chapter:

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“In the spring of 1999, two of this book’s editors, Kramer and I, met for lunch at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. Kramer was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and I was on the faculty of the Kellogg School at Northwestern University. One of the topics that we talked about during lunch was the shift in emphasis in both business schools away from cooperation, trust, communication, coordination, and the like, to the related but distinct topic of leadership. Kramer and I were social psychologists and knew that the topic of leadership had been an important theme in some of the earliest research on group processes. However, as social psychology experienced an infatuation with the “cognitive” revolution in psychology, the topic of leadership shrank into obscurity. By the turn of the millennium, though, there were some new ways of thinking about leadership that had not been introduced to the business school environment. Why not, we thought, have a conference and invite some of social psychology’s most creative innovators to a conference to discuss these new approaches to leadership and then publish a book based on the talks? The conference was held in August of 2000 at the Kellogg School of Management, and the book based on this conference, The Psychology of Leadership, was published in 2005. Two of the creative innovators who were invited to the conference and who wrote chapters for the book are the other two editors of the current book, Allison and Goethals.

“Now, a decade, more or less, later, and there has been a virtual tsunami of books and articles about leadership. When the issue of updating the earlier book was first raised, Kramer and I wondered what the point of a revision would be. We then became aware of the creative work by Allison and Goethals and realized that there was indeed a body of research that had not been described in their earlier book. So Kramer and I discussed the idea of a revision with Allison and Goethals, and we all agreed that such a project was worth exploring. After much discussion and the exchange of scads of ideas, the current book was agreed upon by all of us, who, we should note, are all associated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I was a faculty member, Allison and Kramer were graduate students, and Goethals was a visiting scholar.

“The familiarity of us four editors with each other is a blessing but also a shortcoming. We are all male, white, North American university professors. These facts surely limit our views of what constitutes good leader- ship and who qualifies to be thought of as a leader. Famous people from around the world, people like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, are all well known and admired. But there are many others who would be unrecognized by most Americans. Take, for instance, Lee Kuan Yew (familiarly known in Asia as LKY). LKY was the first prime minister of Singapore and one of the most famous and admired political leaders in Asia. When one of us (DM) taught in Hong Kong to a broad mix of Asian executives, LKY was one of the most popular figures executives wrote about to illustrate excellence in leadership. Consider also Molly Melching, about whom a book has appeared (Molloy, 2013). She is a volunteer in a not-for-profit organization in Senegal who spends time in rural villages where the practice of female genital cutting is a well-established cultural tradition. She has begun the process of gradually eliminating this barbaric practice from hundreds of villages in Senegal but remains relatively obscure in the United States. Finally, think of Simon Bolivar. His name is recognized by a fraction of US scholars, but he is famous throughout Latin America for having led the South American people in a rebellion against Spanish domination. Indeed he has one nation named after him (Bolivia) and is widely known as el Libertador throughout Central and South America. He is to Latin America what George Washington is to the United States.

“Inescapably then, we editors are constrained by our backgrounds in our selection of “core” issues about leadership, and we are constrained in ways that will often be invisible to us. For instance, we are all social psychologists and have read much of the same literature on leadership. But that literature is different from that which a political scientist or a journalist or a military historian will have read. Their books on core concepts would be different from ours—not better, necessarily, nor worse, just different. The way we define leadership is likely to differ from the way people whose backgrounds and experiences are different from ours define leadership. This fact is true about professional experiences and it is equally true about political and social differences. Most citizens of the United States, for instance, would not consider Fidel Castro to be a hero and a leader, but most Cubans would. Most North Koreans think their leaders have almost godlike qualities and most Americans think these leaders are monomaniacal lunatics. What is implied by these differences is that leadership, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder. If history is written by winners, one will either be viewed as a hero or a terrorist depending on who wins….”

Conceptions of Leadership is available in both hardcover and paperback.

Presidential Leadership and African Americans

Our latest books on HEROIC LEADERS

In this book, George Goethals  traces the leadership affecting African Americans of eight US Presidents, from George Washington through Lyndon B. Johnson.  In addition to chapters on each of these men, the volume includes an Introduction and a concluding chapter that considers progress during the past 50 years.  The overall arc of the story begins with slavery and ends with the election of an African American president.

The lives and leadership of individual presidents is considered within two important contexts.  The first is the evolution of the United States, starting as a collection of thirteen separate colonies joining together in 1775 to fight a war against England, and eventually becoming the world’s leading economic and military power.  A second is the evolution of the role and status of African Americans in the United States from slavery to emancipation, through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, to civil rights and voting rights, through affirmative action and to the White House.

But the focus is on the evolving psychology that underlies the attitudes and actions of men who served as US president throughout America’s history of constitutional government.  How did their backgrounds as well as the challenges they faced as presidents shape their values, attitudes, moral development, judgment and, ultimately, their decisions?  We see that historic, economic, and cultural evolutions affect both the lives of African Americans and the nature of presidential leadership.  We see that specific events and politics combine in influencing each president’s attitudes and actions toward blacks.  And we see that the contributions and actions of African Americans alter economic, military, and cultural developments, and, ultimately, presidential leadership.

The life histories and the administrations of the eight presidents we consider both shape and are shaped by Americans of African descent.  While the story highlights the leadership of these chief executives, it also emphasizes the agency of African Americans, some well- known, some never to be known.  These include figures such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  They also include unnamed escaping slaves and as well as fighters in America’s battles from Bunker Hill in 1775 to the present day in the Middle East.

In appraising the personalities, policies, and initiatives of these selected American presidents, the book situates their lives and administrations within the political and cultural context of their times.  The actions of all of them, and the credit or blame we attribute to them, have to be understood within these parameters.  In each case, the historical and situational forces that shape their values, priorities, and ultimately, their actions are highly relevant.  In evaluating their leadership we often overlook these contextual influences.  One goal of this book is to weigh them more fairly.

Presidential Leadership and African Americans is published by Routledge and is now available for purchase.

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Reel Heroes: Volume 1

Our latest books on HEROIC LEADERS

Our third book, Reel Heroes: Volume 1, is now available in paperback and on the kindle. In this book, we describe the elements of the classic hero journey and offer reasons why heroes are psychologically important to us all. Inside you’ll find:

* A new classification scheme identifying movie heroes as Lone Heroes, Duos, or Ensembles.

* A review of 75 movies released in 2013, showing you which movies excel in portraying the hero’s journey and which movies fall flat.

* Our choices for Best Movies and Worst Movies in 2013, along with the year’s Best Movie Heroes.

* Our analysis of Five Great Truths about movie heroes.

* A Forward, written by Matt Langdon, the founder of The Hero Construction Company. Langdon discusses the link between movie heroes and the hero journey in classic myth as outlined by Joseph Campbell.

 Reviews of ‘Reel Heroes: Volume 1’

“Bravo! Film analysis at its finest. Smith and Allison have done a masterful job in providing a challenging yet insightful critique that goes right to the heart of the hero’s journey in contemporary cinema.” – Jason Roy, The Hero Construction Company

“Smith and Allison offer a refreshingly robust analysis of heroes and heroic action, showing us what we should have known all along, namely, that the hero journey makes the movie. Their innovative work is a must-read for all fans of heroes in the movies.” – Dr. James Beggan, Professor of Sociology, University of Louisville

“Smith and Allison get to the heart of the matter, and show us that it is the heart that matters. They go beyond the CGI and the 3D and drag the enduring human values out into the light of day.” – Rick Hutchins, Author of The RH Factor

“You can get more from movies than just a couple hours of fun. You can also learn how to be a hero and how to help others become more heroic. Let Scott and Greg take you deeper into your favorite movies and show you hidden lessons in heroism that you might have missed. Their humorous and thoughtful writing style is almost as entertaining as a summer blockbuster and their book costs less than one trip to the theater.” – David Rendall, Author of The Freak Factor

“A must for movie buffs.” – Jesse Schultz, Author of Alfheim.

“I applaud Smith and Allison for continuing ‘the hero’s journey’ by giving all of us the opportunity to apply movie scenes to the our own personal journeys of being a hero for others!” – Mike Dilbeck, Founder of RESPONSE ABILITY Revolution

“An ingenious approach to understanding effective storytelling in movies and literature.” – Dr. Robert Giacalone, Professor of Business Ethics, University of Denver

“If you want to see movies that will stay with you long after you leave the multiplex, then taking advice from these two on ReelHeroes.net is a great start. If you want to get a sense for what’s important in a successful story, read this book.” – Matt Langdon, Founder of The Hero Construction Company