Leadership development in librarianship, at all levels of the profession, is an urgent and pressing issue given a rapidly developing digital world. Leadership: The Challenge for the Information Professional was designed to address this issue in the information professions and to be a companion volume to the authors' previous book, Managing Information Services, in which only one chapter addressed leadership [1]. The authors were prompted to write their book because they believed that no other text offered a comprehensive overview of leadership development for information professionals. Leadership: The Challenge for the Information Professional is clearly designed as a classroom text. The eight chapters can be read in sequence or as stand-alone chapters. Each chapter includes learning objectives, theories and reflections on leadership, summaries, review questions, challenges, case studies, and abundant end-of-chapter references. Sue Roberts, a practicing information services manager, and Jennifer Rowley, a management academic, note that the style of their book “is one of enquiry rather than instruction” (p. ix). Their text aims to offer a solid theoretical base for leadership coupled with practical tools, including reflection and evaluation supporting leadership development. The authors have based their book on the notion that leadership does not evolve out of either theory or practice alone. Rather, development of leadership involves a fusion of theory and practice. Yet their text is heavily weighted to theory, is very light on practice, and has no obvious fusion of the two, if any. While reading, one must ask how many theories does a librarian need to know to practice effective leadership? The book contains too many current theoretical concepts about leadership development. It does not effectively weave the theoretical concepts into actual practice, instead the chapters separate theory from practice. This is unfortunate as the practice cases, gathered from real librarians and information professionals, are excellent, and they should have been the focal point of the book, not buried, almost as an aside, at the end of each chapter. Practice cases could have been used to illustrate a theory and its attending practices, giving the needed fusion of theory and practice. About two weeks before I read Leadership: The Challenge for the Information Professional, I had the good fortune to attend a rigorous full-week, supervisory workshop taught at my university. Prior to joining the university, the teacher had spent fifteen years as a corporate leadership consultant. His major focus for leadership development was putting theory into concentrated practice. Practice included multiple daily role-play exercises, large and small group work, and intense real-world simulations. Theory became active for workshop participants through practice. The demands for leadership in librarianship and other information intensive professions are enormous given the Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter age we live in. In librarianship, a profession that is heavy on practice, it does not make sense to bury leadership development under a bushel of theories. Yet, even with its flaws, Leadership: The Challenge for the Information Professional is a valuable course text. Roberts and Rowley hit the right leadership notes in their text but have the wrong focal point, theory over practice. With a little help from a faculty syllabus, the focal point can be corrected by fusing practice and theory and their text can be put to work training future leaders.