Drawn to Challenge: Stories of creative leadership in the public interest (with doodles)

Drawing from his experiences as a lawyer, municipal official, and foundation president, Rip Rapson offers two dozen stories of leadership across three decades of civic service. Ranging in weight, complexity, and consequence, the chapters illuminate the rich and expansive potential of principled leadership to improve the ebbs and flows, the rhythms, the contours of contemporary life. Threaded through the accounts is the recognition that a willingness — indeed, a readiness — to adjust, refashion, or even abandon established decision-making expectations or authorities is an essential ingredient in seeking to crack the most difficult challenges of contemporary life. Rapson's experiences illustrate how that process can inject dynamism and innovation into public discourse, policy, and practice. Whether preserving a city's architectural heritage or protecting a irreplaceable wilderness area . . . pursuing an unorthodox run for public office or resetting the trajectory of an iconic American ci