Reading list for a new fire chief

What books would be most helpful to someone taking on the role of an agency manager for the first time?

The City Manager of Milpitas, California has just displayed his brilliance by appointing my friend Clare Frank as the city’s new Fire Chief, running a department with 70 firefighters and a $14 million budget. Clare has had a distinguished career within the California Department of Fire and Forestry and as a lawyer, but this will be her first stint as an agency manager

Clare already has some very clear ideas about how to organize an agency to fight and prevent fires, and to handle the emergency medical response that makes up about 80% of the daily workload of a contemporary fire department. I’ve been putting together a reading list on general management issues. Here’s what I have so far:

Xenophon, Cyropaedaia

Machiavelli, The Prince

Neustadt, Presidential Power

Townsend, Up the Organization

Drucker, The Effective Executive

Stokey and Zeckhauser, A Primer for Policy Analysis

Raiffa, The Art and Science of Negotiation

Lax and Sebenius, The Manager as Negotiator

Moore, Creating Public Value

Heymann, The Politics of Public Management

Other nominations?

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com