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Hard Call: The Art of Great Decisions | 
 enlarge | Authors: John Mccain, Mark Salter
Publisher: Twelve
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy New: $7.04
You Save: $8.95 (56%)
New (35) Used (16) from $7.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 36020
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st. TRADE EDITION
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 044669911X
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780446699112
ASIN: 044669911X
Publication Date: February 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In Hard Call, acclaimed authors John McCain and Mark Salter describe the anatomy of great decisions in history by telling the remarkable stories of men and women who have exemplified composure, wisdom, and intellect in the face of life's toughest decisions. The authors identify six qualities typically represented in the best decisions: Awareness. Timing. Foresight. Confidence. Humility. Inspiration. These qualities are personified by the exceptional individuals in this book, each of whom made a hard call:
Branch Rickey's awareness of the opposition he would face in integrating the Brooklyn Dodgers, and his sagacity in choosing the right man, Jackie Robinson, to break baseball's color barrier.
Winston Churchill's foresight in preparing England's Navy for war.
Anwar Sadat's and Menachem Begin's timing in choosing to risk their lives and political careers by seeking peace in the aftermath of war.
Gertrude Ederle's confidence in deciding to swim the English Channel - and her fortitude in continuing the quest against the wishes of her coach, despite the fact that no woman had ever succeeded.
Reinhold Niebuhr's humility in deciding to abandon his pacifist views and endorse the use of violence against persecution in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Abraham Lincoln's historic act of inspiration: His decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, the role of faith in his life, and his willingness to suffer for a cause greater than himself.
Woven into these stories are John McCain's own views on the process and art of decision-making and examples of the hard calls we face in our lives. "When I assess a decision," McCain writes, "I want to know all I can about the character of the decision maker before I examine the properties of the decision, its outcome or how it was arrived at."
Hard Call is a testament to the people whose choices serve as a beacon for us all.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Hard Call: The Art of Great Decisions July 2, 2008
This is an excellent book. One of the finest, most thought-provoking books I have read.
A Preview of a Possible Presidency June 30, 2008
McCain's book, moreso than that of other politicians, does give you a feel for how he would be as a president. His view of what is a hard call is very relevant.
I do have a quibble in that early on he criticizes the faulty intelligence leading to the Iraq war, then closes the Niebuhr/Bonhoffer chapter under "Humility" with the suggestion they would possibly back the
Iraq war today.
But it does have a variety of history of an era that I lived through but did not pick up on during my childhood, and does give a view of the man.
Worth Sharing May 20, 2008
So good, I wanted to share with my four grandsons by sending each his own personal copy with a note from Grandpa.
Formula Book with Limited Sources March 6, 2008
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Bernie's review is great and I have voted for it. I am going to stop buying formula books that combine a politician's name with a staffer's library browsing. I was especially distressed to not find the world "intelligence" or its commercial equivalent, decision-support. There is nothing wrong with the content, but as someone who writes and reads broadly about intelligence and decision support under conditions of ambiguity, this book could not hold my attention. The small volume by David Boren, A Letter to America was for me much more satisfying.
Ten other books I recommend:
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
 The Man Who Would Be King....eerr...President! February 22, 2008
6 out of 17 found this review helpful
Who else but the ageing Michael Caine should play John McCain in the movie he's continuously making of his life? And the aspiring Commander in Chief shows every sign of a strong desire to take us all to Afghanistan and beyond, namely to Iran.
Let me say quickly that I enjoyed the narrative chapters of this book. Mark Salter writes good, straightforward action prose. Who wouldn't enjoy reading about the high points in the lives of people like Neil Armstrong, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Robert Gould Shaw? But the sermons at the head of each section, on Awareness, Foresight, Timing, Confidence, etc. - whether McCain wrote any of them or merely sketched the notions for Salter to full in - reminded me way too much of Polonius's advice to his son in Hamlet, that is "full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse." I was also mildly disgusted by McCain's gratuitous attempts to link himself to the heroism of his various subjects. For example, you can be sure that when Neil sets foot on the moon, John will remind us that he was a prisoner of war at the time. The result is that despite all, this comes across as a campaign biography, and a sequel at that, to JFK's Profiles in Courage.
Does it tell us something we need to know about Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for President? I think it does. He's a man of little modesty, a man who respects inflexibility much more than the ability to adjust and evolve. Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night: "Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." McCain writes about his heroes as if they were all born with the virtues he values. Obviously most of us are hoping for a President of the second sort, someone who can achieve greatness. But John McCain seems by his own writing to be the third sort, a fairly ordinary earnest guy who has had prominence thrust upon him.
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