BOOKS: Following the Leaders

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Despite such flaws, Certain Trumpets moves along perkily, if only because Wills is incapable of writing a really dull page. The author has a splendid ability to characterize his subjects. He reminds us, for example, that Washington was as accomplished an autodidact as Lincoln and that the famous portraits of the Father of our Country as an unsmiling, po-faced stuffed shirt do an injustice to someone whose contemporaries thought him the livest of wires, even in a room with the likes of Franklin and Jefferson.

As the author suggests, picking leaders and their antitypes is a game that readers can play on their own after finishing the book. Let's see now. Suppose we choose basketball's retired superstar Michael Jordan as the epitome of a sports leader. Who could be the antitype? Well, why not Michael Jordan, struggling baseball minor leaguer?