“Americans no longer have faith in their leaders,” John Burtka writes in his new book, Gateway to Statesmanship: Selections from Xenophon to Churchill. And to help address this problem, Burtka has assembled excerpts from 20 works that he believes can revive the “mirrors for princes” literary tradition that once guided Western leaders for generations. 

In addition to such classics as Xenophon’s The Education of Cyrus and Cicero’s Moral Duties, Burtak adds Eastern influences, including Kautilya’s Arthasastra and Han Fei’s The Difficulty of Persuasion. He also extends his canon into modern times with works from George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and, as the title of the book indicates, Winston Churchill.