"Hearts Touch With Fire: How Great Leaders Are Made," by David Gergen

David Gergen is a retired professor of public service and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He serves as a senior political analyst for CNN, working actively with a rising generation of new leaders. He served as a White House adviser to four U.S. presidents of both parties: Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. He wrote about those experiences in his New York Times best-seller, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton (Simon & Schuster, 2001).

In the 1980s, he began a career in journalism. Starting with the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour in 1984, Gergen has been a regular commentator on public affairs for some 30 years. Twice he has been a member of election coverage teams that won Peabody awards, and he has contributed to two Emmy award-winning political analysis teams. In the late 1980s, he was chief editor of U.S. News & World Report.

A native of North Carolina, Gergen is a member of the D.C. Bar, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the U.S. executive committee for the Trilateral Commission. An honors graduate of Yale and the Harvard Law School, he has been awarded 27 honorary degrees.