Examining the strategies employed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to build leadership authority, George Breslauer focuses on the power of ideas, as leaders use them to mobilize support and to craft an image as effective problem solvers, indispensable consensus builders, and symbols of national unity. Throughout the book, Breslauer compares Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and Khrushchev and Brezhnev, analyzing the changes in policy, the strategies, and...