The Sun gives Drew Faust's new book, This Republic of Suffering, a rave review, one of a string of positive mentions the book has been attracting. (Could this book be a bestseller? I'd be mildly surprised, but not entirely; the Civil War always intrigues, Drew Faust is now a high-profile figure, and reading about the Civil War might be one way Americans can consider the Iraq war.)

"No one expected what the Civil War was to become," Ms. Faust writes at the beginning of her book, and it is the terrible surprise of the war, the inability of Americans to predict or prepare for its cost, that she so powerfully communicates.

The book sounds fascinating. But something else from the review jumped out at me—an unintentional insight, I think, into Drew Faust's leadership style.

As armies and governments tried to figure out how to bury so many corpses and assign the correct name to each grave, civilians back home evolved their own rituals and fictions to try to make sense of their loved ones' deaths in battle. Ms. Faust sheds light on both of these processes, thanks to her extensive research in official records and private correspondence. In general, she keeps her own voice muted, seldom imposing an interpretation, but allowing the dead to speak for themselves. [Emphasis added]

If you substitute—heh-heh—the word "faculty" for the word "dead," that bolded sentence pretty much sums up the way that Drew Faust has led Harvard since she was anointed president. And at least for the moment, it seems to be working: The place is calm, projects are chugging along, there's been nary a hint of divisive controversy on campus this year.

There is, of course, a chicken-and-egg question here: Did Drew Faust go into history because she's a good listener, or did she become a good listener through her historian's work, in which the voices of the past do, or should, matter more than the voice of their retriever?

And, of course, there's the interesting corollary about gender. What role did Faust's sex play in making her a good listener? Did she have to be, growing up an ambitious and intelligent woman in conservative Virginia, where women's proud voices might not have been encouraged in the public sphere?

(My grandmother ran for Congress from Yorktown, Virginia, around 1950, I think it was, so I know something of this.)

And another corollary: Any discussion of academic field, gender, voice and leadership style in this context can not help but lead to thoughts of Larry Summers and questions of how his voice, developed through years of family arguments and contentious econ seminars, infiltrated and shaped his own leadership style.

Does the field of history encourage listening more than the field of economics does? If so, why, and what are the implications? And how might that dynamic be shaped by gender, and how might it affect who chooses to enter that field?