Book excerpt: You don't need a big title or a business degree in order to lead with impact. What you need is practical wisdom: the insight, judgment, and strength of character that all great leaders have, but that most business schools and corporate workshops don't teach. The Greats on Leadership gets you there. Jocelyn Davis takes you on an in-depth tour of the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries, featuring classic authors from Plato to Winston Churchill, Shakespeare to Jane Austen, C.G. Jung to Peter Drucker, and many more. In a style both thought provoking and entertaining, she shows how -history's great writers have always been, and still are, the real leadership gurus. Davis spells out the behaviors that distinguish true leaders from misleaders and covers 20 specific leadership topics, including: Leadership Traps (Shakespeare) Change (Machiavelli) Power (Sophocles) Dilemmas (Madison, Hamilton) Communication (Lincoln, Pericles) Personality Types (Jung) Motivation (Frankl) Judgment (Maupassant, Melville, Austen, Shaw) Character (Churchill, Plutarch, Shelley, Joyce) Each chapter begins with a synopsis of a great work by the author and then draws out the key leadership insights, weaving them together with business examples, the best contemporary research, and tools to help put it all into practice. In the last two chapters Davis presents a new way to think about leadership levels, framing them in terms of the impact you have rather than the title on your business card. Whether you're a recent graduate or MBA searching for something more inspiring than the standard textbook, a new manager looking for something deeper than the typical how-to book, or an experienced executive seeking ideas to lift you to the next level, this remarkably readable and practical guide will set you on the road to becoming a great leader.