Ancient history yields modern management lessons

— -- Looking to iconic figures of history for guidance on how to take charge of today's corporations remains fertile ground for publishers of books on management and leadership.

A recent search of Amazon.com reveals thousands of books with "leadership lessons" in the title.

Management writers have found useful lessons in the lives of such luminaries as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Patton, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi. The roster is endless.

Now comes an addition to the genre, Power, Ambition, Glory: The Stunning Parallels between Great Leaders of the Ancient World and Today ... and the Lessons You Can Learn.

The book reflects a fusion of expertise of the two authors: classics professor John Prevas brings a knowledge of antiquity. Steve Forbes, the chairman, CEO and editor in chief of Forbes, brings a knowledge of management garnered from years in the executive suite.

Like modern corporations, "the empires of the past extracted wealth and exploited manpower from those 'under management' through a combination of trade and conquest," the authors write.

While many books in the genre get away with sketches of historic figures, the better ones paint verbal portraits. Count Power, Ambition, Glory among the latter. Forbes and Prevas richly detail the successes and failures of six leaders from the classical period:

•Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, who united most of the ancient Middle East into a single state.

•Xenophon, a Greek scholar who stepped up in a time of crisis to take command of a despondent army of mercenaries stranded in the middle of a hostile Persian Empire. "Some might call him the ancient equivalent to today's turnaround artist," the authors write.

•Alexander the Great, the legendary Macedonian king who conquered much of what was then the civilized world before a fondness for alcohol lubricated his path to self-destruction.

•Hannibal, the Carthaginian commander whose white-hot hatred of the Romans inspired him to lead an army with war elephants across the Alps.