For The Common Good

A review by Thomas J. Rice

For The Common Good; Redefining Civic Leadership, by David Chrislip and Ed O’Malley, is a singular contribution to the leadership literature, a genre that churns out over 2000 volumes a year and shows no sign of waning. With that kind of volume cascading off the press, I’m aware that it stretches credulity to claim singularity for such a slim volume. Still, I’m not alone in seeing something special here: For The Common Good has already won three highly coveted awards in this crowded field.

Why is this book so special? For openers, it is a direct challenge to an orthodoxy that has dominated a field that was first established as such in the late 60s and 70s. Even a casual review of this daunting body of work cannot fail to notice that, for all its variety, there is one dominant carrying beam, a mostly-unspoken premise, at the center of this literature: Leadership resides in the individual in a position of authority with a followership dependent on the leader for vision, strategy, and inspiration. Sometimes charismatic, often not, the leader is always at the center of the action. His character and intellect—and it is typically a man —is the main determinant of the fate of his followers, be they organizations, cities, regions, or nation states.

The Author’s Show

Thomas J. Rice, author of "Rites of Passage: Five Irish Stories"

Conducted in 2017 by Linda Thompson, host of “The Authors Show” since 2005; the show is a podcast made available on multiple online channels across the US, each featuring one individual author for a full 24 hours, Monday through Thursday. For more details, google “The Authors Show.”

Told with sympathy and humor, the five Irish stories in Thomas Rices' Rites of Passage are of homeland lost and recovered, of fierce loyalties, of dashed and regained hopes, of betrayals and humiliations, of boys making their perilous journeys to manhood, of single mothers eking an existence out of stony soil, of the foibles and follies of small town communities, of grown men escaping the long shadow of childhood trauma.

Writer’s Voice Podcast

Memoirs of Ireland

Americans like to honor Saint Patrick’s Day by downing green beer and watching the colleens high step Irish jigs on the parade floats passing by. But it’s a good time to remember that it wasn’t all sweetness and light back in the old country. There was a reason why so many of Ireland’s young men and women had to leave their verdant homeland and make their way to the gritty streets of America. The brutal British rule over Ireland impoverished their families and their nation, forcing the families apart in a quest for survival.

Thomas Rice was one of those young men. He grew up in a remote farming community, Ballinvalley, Ireland, near the foothills of Mt. Leinster. He left his family farm at the age of 16, coming to the U.S. Rice eventually made the transition from barely educated Irish farm boy to professor of sociology. But, as with all emigrants, the bittersweet memories of his youth continued to percolate through his mind for the next fifty years. Now he’s come out with his memoir of his Irish youth, FAR FROM THE LAND.