Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times, or do the times make the leader? In LEADERSHIP, Doris Kearns Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely --- Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights) --- to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear and hope.