A leadership guidebook that turns extraordinary crises into enduring lessons.
Typical leadership books assume you have time to mull things over and tailor a plan to match each circumstance, but a real crisis is the moment when the luxury of time vanishes. In Bombs, Bacon, and Bankruptcy: The Art of Crisis Leadership, Henry J. Evans shares a template for high‑pressure leadership gleaned from three sharply different emergencies, along with experience running his own company. He contracted with the government in counterterrorism, helped a grocery chain through the COVID pandemic, and worked with a family manufacturer thrown into turmoil after its founder’s death. Through every win and loss, these stories function as case studies in what it takes to stay decisive, humane, and operationally sharp when everything is falling apart. Directed largely at business owners, managers, and those in positions of oversight, the practical advice in this insightful guide can help anyone navigate professional threats, personal emergencies, and crises of every sort.
After an immersive overview of the titular events, Evans organizes the book into four movements: understanding the crisis in front of you, mobilizing your people, planning a strategy, and executing it well. Along the way, he hands readers tools they can actually use, drawn directly from the opening stories. Practical lessons include box breathing to interrupt an “amygdala hijack,” a triage system for sorting incubating, emerging, and acute threats, and how to communicate as clearly as possible to avoid making an already challenging situation worse. The author argues that preparing now and getting into the habit of leading competently will equip readers to respond thoughtfully, rather than react emotionally, and avoid the crippling instinct to freeze when a different reaction is needed.
Evans writes with a voice that is both warm and engaging. The anecdotes relating to his work combating IEDs and other top-secret clearance projects are gripping enough to merit their own book. How clever that instead of disposing of defused bombs, they preserved components, dusted for fingerprints, and located some of the terrorists responsible for making the devices in the first place. And the teachable moments shared with readers feel like icing on the cake. The material occasionally tilts toward his consulting practice, where the talk of 90-day sprints and signed commitments edges close to a brochure, but even in this, his practical wisdom outweighs the promotional sheen. Evan notes that his “mission in life is to leave people and situations better than I found them,” and there is no doubt readers will walk away feeling better equipped for the next disaster. Honesty keeps the advice grounded, and real-world examples make everything more concrete in Bombs, Bacon, and Bankruptcy, a leadership guidebook that turns extraordinary crises into enduring lessons.
