He is white-haired and wide-eyed, an ever-curious scholar dressed in khakis and a striped shirt. Although slowed by age, he remains active enough that when his car broke down in town earlier in the day, he walked back home, uphill, for more than a mile.
First published nearly 60 years ago, Burns is a longtime expert on presidential leadership and leadership in general. He has written often about the "transformational" leader, one with the vision to change the world, and the "transactional" leader, one who knows how to negotiate and compromise. His 1978 text, "Leadership," is widely studied by business and political science majors, while his two-volume biography of Franklin Roosevelt is a model for books on the late president.
"Anybody who's going to write about leadership and presidential authority would want to consult his books," says Robert Dallek, author of "Nixon and Kissinger" and biographies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
"He's an important scholar and also extremely accessible," says Geoffrey C. Ward, whose books include the acclaimed FDR biography "A First-Class Temperament." "He knows how to tell a story and put you in a scene and make you want to know what happens next. In addition to being a political scientist, he's a wonderful storyteller, and that's quite unusual."
Burns's books also include a three-volume set on American history, "The American Experiment"; a critique of the Clinton administration, "Dead Center"; a biography of George Washington written with his companion and fellow historian, Susan Dunn; and a survey of presidents over the past four decades, "Running Alone."
Digging into the Supreme Court's history, he responds with the enthusiasm of a graduate student. He is fascinated by Franklin Roosevelt's doomed effort in the 1930s to "pack" the court with liberal judges, and looks forward to learning more about such justices as Louis Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone, and William Howard Taft.
