Table of Contents
1 The Death of a Pope
2 Early Years
3 The Road to the Papacy
4 The Polish Pope
5 Bringing an End to Communism
6 Traveling Pope
7 Crisis in the Church
8 Final Years
Foreword: On Leadership
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Chronology 97
Bibliography 101
Further Reading 102
Index 104
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
On Leadership
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eadership, it may be said, is really what makes the world
go round. Love no doubt smoothes the passage; but
love is a private transaction between consenting adults.
Leadership is a public transaction with history. The idea of lead-
ership affirms the capacity of individuals to move, inspire, and
mobilize masses of people so that they act together in pursuit
of an end. Sometimes leadership serves good purposes, some-
times bad; but whether the end is benign or evil, great leaders
are those men and women who leave their personal stamp
on history.
Now, the very concept of leadership implies the proposition
that individuals can make a difference. This proposition has never
been universally accepted. From classical times to the present day,
eminent thinkers have regarded individuals as no more than the
agents and pawns of larger forces, whether the gods and goddesses
of the ancient world or, in the modern era, race, class, nation, the
dialectic, the will of the people, the spirit of the times, history itself.
Against such forces, the individual dwindles into insignificance.
So contends the thesis of historical determinism. Tolstoy's
great novel War and Peace offers a famous statement of the case.
Why, Tolstoy asked, did millions of men in the Napoleonic Wars,
denying their human feelings and their common sense, move
back and forth across Europe slaughtering their fellows? "The
war," Tolstoy answered, "was bound to happen simply because
it was bound to happen." All prior history determined it. As for
leaders, they, Tolstoy said, "are but the labels that serve to give
a name to an end and, like labels, they have the least possible
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connection with the event." The greater the leader, "the more
conspicuous the inevitability and the predestination of every act
