Everything rises and falls on leadership. Leadership is the most critical ingredient in any organization. We all understand the importance of good leadership and know it when we see it, but describing or teaching leadership is elusive at best. Enter ""The Shipbuilder."" This delightful business-management parable set in ancient Greece teaches the Five Principles of Leadership.

The more accurately a cost index captures a shipbuilder's risk, the less the Navy should have to pay its shipbuilders. The Navy uses such indexes to correct for significant cost risks outside its shipbuilders' control. A longtime material-cost index in Navy shipbuilding is the steel-vessel index, but it is outdated and volatile. The authors urge the Navy to develop a modern-vessel index that more appropriately represents the materials used today.

Glasgow, 1928. Margaret Bannatyne lost both of her brothers in the Great War and is now the last remaining child of wealthy and powerful shipyard owner William Bannatyne. Without a male heir to carry on the family business, William expects his daughter to do her duty, marry well and provide him with a grandson to inherit his business. Margaret cares deeply for her father but she has ambitions of her own: after witnessing a horrific accident when she was sixteen, she's determined to become a doctor. Her father, convinced she will never practise medicine, permits Margaret to complete her training. But he doesn't count on her falling in love with Alasdair Morrison. Alasdair, a union man at the shipyard, has been a thorn in William's side for years, and he didn't become one of the richest men in Glasgow only for Alasdair to take it all away - even if it means destroying his only daughter's happiness by forcing her to make a heartbreaking and impossible choice . . .