Santa Clara University

Posner's classic Leadership Challenge now in its third edition

Since the first edition was published in 1987, The Leadership Challenge, by Barry Z. Posner, dean of the Leavey School of Business, and his co-author, James M. Kouzes, has sold more than 1.2 million copies and is considered by many to be a classic in the genre. The completely revised third edition was published last October (Jossey Bass, $27.95), and it will be available in paperback this September.

Posner says The Leadership Challenge is as relevant now as it ever was. "Leadership is not a fad, but a timeless requirement for both personal and organizational renewal and growth," he explains. "As turmoil and uncertainty increases, leadership becomes even more essential, as people look for leaders to provide beacons of light into the darkness of the future ahead."

"The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership have remained consistently important over the past two decades in explaining what people are doing when they are at their personal best as leaders: Modeling the Way, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Challenging the Process, Enabling Others to Act, and Encouraging the Heart," adds Posner.

In this new edition, says Posner, he and co-author Kouzes focus more on the importance of leadership as a relationship. "Success in leadership, success in business, success in life has been, is now, and will continue to be a function of how well people work and play together," he says. "Success in leading will be wholly dependent upon the capacity to build and sustain those human relationships that enable people to get extraordinary things done on a regular basis."

Kouzes and Posner have received wide acclaim for their work in the leadership field, and they are the recipients of the McFeely Award, which is given by the International Management Council to the nation's top management and leadership educators.

For more information, see www.leadershipchallenge.com.

Dark God of Eros

The latest addition to the California Legacy Series, a joint publishing venture between Santa Clara University and Heyday Books, is Dark Gods of Eros: A William Everson Reader (Santa Clara University and Heyday Books, 2003, $22.95). In May, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass and others gathered at SCU to celebrate the publication of this new book with an evening of poetry in tribute to the life and work of William Everson (1912-1994), who was many things in his life: farmer, conscientious objector, agnostic, pantheist, Dominican friar, fine printer, and deeply religious poet.

The book contains a fascinating array of work by Everson, including poems from many different times in his life; essays, letters, and autobiography; and examples of his beautiful printing work. In addition, readers will find an informative chronology of Everson's life, and compelling essays about him by fellow poets including Hass and others such as Denise Levertov, Czelaw Milosz, Robert Bly, and Robert Creeley.

"William Everson knew California as well as anyone could," says Terry Beers, California Legacy series editor and a professor of English at SCU. "Its landscapes provoked in him early a response that would in various forms became the principal theme in his work: the relation of body and spirit."

For more information on the California Legacy Series, see www.californialegacy.org.