Moshik Temkin’s new book is aptly titled Warriors, Rebels, and Saints: The Art of Leadership from Machiavelli to Malcolm X. Like any expert in their field, or bonafide, public intellectual, Temkin – a former associate professor of history and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy school – is able to communicate both orally and literarily with this distinctive clarity, and egoless sense of presentation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.moshiktemkin.com/

The book compliments many interviews, talks, and seminars where Mr. Temkin has solidified his key talking and focal points, in the case of Warriors, Rebels, and Saints key figures who have shaped modern history and historical movements, criminally underreported and understood by people who call themselves students of history. Temkin isn’t apologetic about sometimes being plainspoken about what moves him about the people he highlights. In an exclusive interview, alongside Amanda Goodall, he talks about how his book is indicative of what he and Goodall focus upon as a core, ideological crux succeeding the constructs of the ‘Great Man Theory’.

“…I’m interested in leadership not just at the top, but also in the middle of society and the bottom of society (though sometimes you can’t even say bottom because certain people are outside any connection to power or authority),” Temkin states. “So in the book, warriors represent people willing to stand up and fight for ideas that they believe in or the public or the institutions they represent.

For example, these are the people fighting for independence against a colonial power or fighting for civil rights against an oppressive state. Rebels are the ones who reject the status quo. It’s not just a symbolic or figurative rebellion. It’s often very real, and people are willing to kind of leave everything behind and go underground, as was the case of the French resistance or the young women who fought against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Finally, we don’t necessarily associate saints with leadership, but these people embody sacrifice. They’re leaders who understand that in order to bring about change, they have to give up what is most valuable to them. This could be someone like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.”

In effect, history isn’t just written by those deemed winners. It can be written by those who win, triumph, and struggle – often without the kind of fame, glory, or institutional recognition the proclaimed victors possess. An ideological compromise in this regard is none other than FDR. “I wanted to write about FDR as someone who made a lot of compromises from within. He and his wife both came from elite families, but they understood that they had to have a connection with the people outside of their world.

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Rebels-Saints-Leadership-Machiavelli/dp/1541758471

They called it noblesse oblige, the responsibility of privileged people to help those less fortunate,” Temkin states. “…During the Great Depression, I consider FDR a warrior in the sense of not just fighting a war, which he also did, but in the sense of fighting the entrenched power that was determined to prevent him from protecting the well-being of the people. In that way, it’s not hard to understand why FDR’s staunchest enemies and fiercest haters were usually people from his own socioeconomic background, which really speaks to what a warrior he was — and also a bit of a rebel.”

Garth Thomas