CERTAIN TRUMPETS

Political commentator Wills undertakes to study leadership as manifested by people widely separated by time and place: King David, George Washington, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. for example. His writing is excellent, as usual, but he was not the right choice as narrator; his voice is too pedestrian, too measured and unexcited to make a book like this come alive. His voice carries scholarship without the fire; though one suspects the fire is there, he’s not the one to convey it orally. Select this one for its content, not its style; the insights Wills offers are often unusual. D.W. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: MAR 95]