Of Life and of Leadership is not a typical, unidimensional autobiography. This is because it is about Dr Brendan Nelson AO, a truly multidimensional Australian. Nelson relates his early family life, his university days, followed by his careers in medicine, then federal politics, then international diplomacy, then running the Australian War Memorial, and finally in the corporate world with Boeing. He writes about his working-class Catholic upbringing in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. He then outlines his path into medicine at the fledgling Flinders Medical School, as well as some medical student anecdotes of love and study. Importantly, the provenance…