Burn Notice

The task this week, write a biography about a biographer, what I’ve chosen to do, inform you as to why this 92 year old man is cooler than you and me.

James MacGregor Burns was born August 3, 1918.  As part of his education he attended Williams College after turning down Princeton University.  Total side note but how much fun would it be to say, “Sorry Princeton but I’m too cool for your school.”  That's probably just my fantasy, so here is some more cool information about Burns. During WWII he joined the Army as a combat historian in the Pacific where he received four battle stars and a Bronze star.  Next he completed his master’s and doctorate in Political Science at Harvard University.  He then went on to write many notable and award winning books, including, "Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox,"(1956),  the Pulitzer Prize winning, “Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom,” (1970),  "Leadership" (1978), and "The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America" (2001).

So let’s take a pause for a moment. Just looking at what I’ve mentioned above, I’m already jealous of all his cool accomplishments, and just when you think Burns couldn’t possibly have done anything cooler you find out he did.   So what makes Burns even cooler you ask?  How about the fact that he is not really one to brag, case and point he tried to convince the University of Maryland not to name their leadership academy after him, they did anyway.  To this day anytime Burns has to mention the leadership academy he still keeps his name out of it.

The last thing I want to mention and probably the most relevant thing to this class is that Burns coined the theory of transformational leadership.  I know I should probably talk about the fact that transformational leadership was a way of getting away from the idea of trait based leadership and focusing instead on the interactions of leaders and their followes, but to be honest I totally just love the idea that he coined something.

This concludes Mr. Burns’s biography but if you really want one last reason as to why he is way cooler than me and probably you, because this has got to have happened to someone besides me, here it is.  The entire time I’ve been writing this my headphones have been, unbeknownst to me, tied into my shirt (don’t ask me how) and when I went to get up to get something to drink I was violently attacked by my computer.  I am convinced James MacGregor Burns is too cool to ever have anything like this happen to him.