<P>In this book, Harvard Kennedy School authors focus diverse conceptual lenses on a single high-stakes management challenge ?enhancing U.S. port security. The aims are two: to understand how that complex challenge might plausibly be met and to explore the similarities, differences, and complementarities of their alternative approaches to public management.</P><P>The 9-11 attacks resulted in heightened security efforts in American ports. Any attack on a seaport would be far more disruptive to the day-to-day functions of the country than even airport closures. Much of the responsibility for increasing port security fell to the U.S. Coast Guard.</P><P>While the Guard had always been tasked with protecting America's ports and coastline, it was now responsible for securing critical, complex, and vulnerable assets during a time of war, a job it clearly could not handle alone. The most obvious strategy was federal regulation, and that was inevitably an important tool. At the time, however, government regulation in general was not in great favor. What else could be done? No one seemed to have the answer until USCG Commander Suzanne Englebert emerged from midlevel bureaucracy to lead this work.</P><P> <I>Ports in a Storm</I> considers the monumental challenges of producing and leading hugely important macro-level change in a very complex system. Englebert had to lead the way from a midlevel position in an organization that had never before faced the issues that it now confronted. The book looks closely at what Englebert did, discerning what seemed to be useful and what problems remain. It celebrates her initiative, innovativeness, and persistence in facing a growing public management problem. </P><P>Englebert's story is instructional beyond the seaport question. Kennedy School faculty used her case as a challenge to the eclectic and pragmatic constructs they had been developing for public managers. Instead of starting with abstract theory and searching for examples that fit, these authors start with the concrete and then harness scholarship to the service of better practice. Rather than mimic principles from the business world, they tailor their approach to the challenge of managing in a context of complex goals, multiple constituencies, and procedural formality. In this way, they have developed many distinctive approaches to public management. The volume allows readers to see how the theories measure up.</P>