The ancient people of Israel and contemporary Western society share a preoccupation with the idea of leadership. In this perceptive and engaging book, David Runcorn reveals just how deeply one world can speak to the other.

The story of 1 and 2 Samuel opens with a woman weeping. But grief is often the precursor of change, and the answering of Hannah’s prayer is revealed in her song as a prophetic sign of God’s ways in all the world. As the author then helps us reflect on various revealing episodes, time and again, he enables us to trace the true presence of God in the words, actions or faithful endurance of people on the edge of the ‘main’ script. And, he suggests, it is in the kind of honest, disciplined attentiveness they display, that the greatest hope for leadership will be found today.