American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane by Isaacson, Walter (2009) Hardcover

What are the roots of creativity? What makes for great leadership? In this collection of essays, Isaacson reflects on the lessons to be learned from Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has chronicled. The people he writes about have qualities that were rare, such as imagination and true curiosity. He reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges he sees for journalism in the digital age. He offers tributes to his hometown of New Orleans which offered the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, an early mentor.