The starting point of this week's special section on leadership came earlier this year, when a group of Time Inc. editors spent several days in Cambridge, Mass., listening to academics from many fields. Again and again the specialists ended their description of America's problems with a call for leadership.

The call heard at Cambridge has been echoed in many ways across the country and the world. So pervasive and so pertinent to the lives of all of our readers is the leadership crisis that we decided that it required unusual treatment. Thus we present a ten-page cover story in which we discuss the essence of leadership and explore the reasons for the loss of authority as well as what can be done about it. We also present a 28-page biographical album of 200 men and women who we feel are America's rising leaders. We do this because we believe that while the cry for leadership suggests trouble, it also offers opportunity. Appearances to the contrary, we feel, there are indeed leaders in America -- actual or potential -- who will assume their roles given the right situation.

Our special section represents months of effort by a large task force working in New York City as well as scores of correspondents who nominated candidates for the portfolio. A team of reporter-researchers headed by Leah Gordon also proposed names and verified the accuracy of the short biographies written by Neil D. Glockin, Roger Wolmuth and other writers. We include some nominations for the greatest leaders of all time by prominent thinkers in various fields.

With the help of Researcher-Reporters Janice Castro and Gaye Mclntosh, Associate Editor Lance Morrow wrote the lead story. The son of two Washington journalists, Morrow has been interested in politics since childhood. He served a few summers as a Senate page and was fascinated by such figures as Joseph McCarthy, then in the midst of his downfall, and the young Senator John F. Kennedy. After graduation from Harvard and a year with the Washington Star, Morrow joined TIME in 1965. The author of dozens of covers and TIME Essays, he was aptly suited for an assignment that straddled both genres.

The task of overseeing the entire leadership project fell to Senior Editor Ronald P. Kriss. A Harvard graduate, Kriss worked for two years as executive editor of the Saturday Review and has been at TIME for ten years. Says Kriss: "Our portfolio went through five versions -- which shows that there's a tremendous pool of talent around." We don't suggest that readers will agree with every choice, but we do hope that they will be stimulated to think about who the nation's leaders are -- and what their roles should be.

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