Every age requires prudence of its leaders and ours is certainly no different. These studies not only remind us of this truth but teach us what is truly at issue.

James L. Wiser, University of San Francisco

Next to hope, prudence is modernity's most neglected political virtue. This astute combination of theory and case studies is a major step toward remedying this neglect.

Clarke E. Cochran, Texas Tech University

Highly Recommended.

Choice Reviews

The volume succeeds in making the case for regarding prudence as a moral virtue; in describing the utility of 'prudential leadership' as a device for interpreting historical and contemporary decisions ; nad in advocating the need for society's immanent ideals to be calibrated withing leaders' decision-making repetoires.

Political Studies Review

Tempered Strength provides us with both a theoretical guide to the role of prudential leadership in the history of political philosophy, as well as practical guidance with regard to the exercise of such leadership (or at times, its lack) from ancient times to the present. The authors present a wide range of perspectives on leadership, and show how personal character, for better or worse, mattered to individual politicians from Frederick Douglass to Bill Clinton. Meditating on the nature and scope of prudential leadership as this volume does should be at the core of any serious study of politics in the future.

Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man