Pillars of Greatness is a piece that considers life pursuits from the perspective of purposefulness and sustainable fulfillment. It emphasizes the need to live life purposefully. While most of us are basically in constant pursuit of success, there is more to fulfillment than these discrete achievements that are called successes. Greatness is rather the ultimate- linking purpose and destiny to fulfillment. Greatness comes when successes are sustainable by principles and consistent with purpose. There are four pillars to greatness: vision, passion, actions and principles. The book illustrates the processes involved in quality envisioning, mechanisms of building burning and driving passion, strategies of effecting potent actions, and principles of sustaining greatness. Its a piece like no other on this subject. The uniqueness of the authors approach and the inspiring and compelling approach to teaching fundamental life principles becomes irresistibly impactful and inspiring. The reader is spontaneously ignited into motion towards greatness upon assimilating the content of this book! There is greatness in you, but you will choose whether to express it through your use of the pillars to build your tower of greatness. Will you be great? Its your choice!

Governmentality offers an explanation for the 21st century global web of power relations

When a new president is elected in November, someone will be called to greatness. But it remains to be seen whether that call will be answered. In the wake of the Clinton scandal, the upcoming election presents an opportunity for candidates and citizens alike to reaffirm their belief that the office of the president demands greatness. But Marc Landy and Sidney Milkis suspect that the public will be disappointed once again, because the demand for greatness far exceeds the supply. In fact, they claim that we have had no great presidents in the last half of this century. In this provocative new book, they explain why. Landy and Milkis look to the past to show how five presidents-Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt-set the standards for presidential leadership and achievement. These were men who left genuine legacies, whose vision expanded the office of the presidency as they inaugurated momentous and far-reaching change. They were leaders who knew how to reconcile innovation with constitutional tradition and were able to both educate the people about their agendas and win their allegiance. They were also great builders and leaders of their parties amid times of political realignment. Searching for common threads in these five presidencies, Landy and Milkis enable us to better understand both the possibilities and the limitations of the office. They show how presidents after FDR have never risen to true greatness-not even Lyndon Johnson, an "overreacher" whose Great Society was a failed revolution, or Ronald Reagan, an underachiever whose conservative revolution never fully got under way. Our greatest presidents, they argue, sought to profoundly change the nature of the regimes they inherited and had the luck to assume office under conditions that allowed such renovation; today's leaders have lacked either the ambition, the opportunity, or both. Perhaps, the authors observe, the older our country gets the harder greatness is to come by. Our next great president might be sworn in next year, but he or she will face a daunting task in matching the stature of past leaders. Landy and Milkis's book is an evenhanded assessment of our national icons that reestablishes our understanding of presidential greatness and demonstrates the importance--and reality--of inspired democratic leadership.

This path-breaking work offers the first comprehensive examination of the important personalities and events that have influenced the course of history. It discusses whether people who go down in history are different from the rest of us and whether specific personality traits predispose certain people to become world leaders, movie stars, scientific geniuses, and athletes. It sheds light on the depth of potential in everyone, yielding important clues as to how we can take advantage of our own individual personality traits. Probing the lives of a range of important figures, the book explores the full range of phenomena associated with greatness, scrutinizing the significance of everything from genetic inheritance, intuition, aesthetic appreciation, and birth order, to formal education, sexual orientation, aging, IQ, and alcohol and drug abuse. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in the people and events that have helped shape the world, including mental health professionals and scholars studying psychological topics in the larger context of science, art, politics, and history. The book also serves as an engaging text for undergraduate psychology courses.