1989, Americans had cordless phones and VCRs, but the cell
phone and the DVD existed only in the human imagination.
Fast forward thirteen years to 2002. As I write this in Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, much of the world is consumed with the
question of whether the United States will go to war with Iraq.
Former President Jimmy Carter recently won the Nobel Peace
Prize, and, days later, North Korea revealed that it has nuclear
weapons after all. The possibility of nuclear catastrophe looms
over the planet as it has not done since the early 1960s, at the
height of the Cold War, when every American school child
knew to duck and cover in case of a Soviet attack. When I wrote
that original introduction, the United States was still recovering
from the stock market crash of October 1987. Since then, the
nation has undergone a period of unprecedented prosperity—
only to become mired, in the last year or two, in the most
painful recession most people under 50 have ever seen. In 1989,
the Democrats, eager to take back the White House, had high
hopes for the charismatic young governor of Arkansas. Bill
Clinton would serve two terms as president, only to be im-
peached (and ultimately acquitted) after a tacky scandal involv-
ing a young White House intern with an infamous blue dress.
George W. Bush is now in the Oval Office, after losing the pop-
ular vote in 2000 and having the presidential election decided,
for the first time ever, by the Supreme Court of the United
States. The human genome has been decoded and the secrets of
the human brain revealed as never before, thanks to extraordi-
nary imaging technology. And AIDS is no longer an automatic
death sentence in America, although it is killing more people in
sub-Saharan Africa than any disease since the great plagues of
the Middle Ages and rapidly spreading throughout Asia.
The opening chapter of On Becoming a Leader urges readers
to “master the context,” and that is both more important thanOn Becoming a Leaderxiv0465014088_fm.qxd:0738208175_fm.qxd 12/2/08 2:52 PM Page xiv