I have reasons for each of those books and certainly The Invisible Man in this moment of the Black Lives Matter protests and the continuing racial reckoning. Invisible Man really taught me to not see through anybody ever. But the book I give right now in this time of so much despair is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning , where he really looks at people in the Holocaust and asks himself, why did some just sort of crumple up and die and others stayed resilient and strong? And that at the end of the day, no one can take our dignity away from us. And so I think that we have to be reminded right now that, between stimulus and response, there is a choice. And we’re in that moment. And I have seen myself personally so often that in the darkest times we can find our best selves and that’s our opportunity right now. And so I think for this moment, Tim, Man’s Search for Meaning should be required reading for all of us.

I’m a big fan of history, Tim. American history, revolutionary history. Living now for almost 20 years in Princeton, surrounded by revolutionary history. Even as a kid I was. There’s a great book by an author named Benson Bobrick called Angel in the Whirlwind . It’s a history of the American Revolution. Obviously, countless histories of the American Revolution have been written. This one’s pretty special in that he’s a great storyteller. There is a great hero in the book. Do you want to guess who the hero of the American Revolution is? It’s not a trick question. Tim Ferriss: I don’t even want to – I’m afraid to embarrass myself. John Crowley: George Washington. Tim Ferriss: There we go, okay. John Crowley: So, easy answer, George Washington. Tim Ferriss: I was going to go for the layup, but I was like, I might flub it. John Crowley: He picks a villain and it’s Benedict Arnold.

Obvious I give out my own books fairly often: The Startup View , The Alliance . Recently I’ve been giving out another book of friend of mine, Joshua Cooper Ramos, The Seventh Sense .

Well, outside of our cookbooks and Setting the Table , which is the most gift I give because someone’s got to give it, I love marketing. I just love marketing because marketing is understanding the other person. Marketing is a dialogue. It’s a lot like hospitality. And I love Seth Godin’s books. And I would say that I’ve given many of his books, but probably the one that I’ve given the most is This Is Marketing . And it comes down to one simple express — He’s just so brilliant at getting to the essence of what something really is. And he thinks marketing is when you can convey that people like us do things like this. And that sounds so simple, and yet it’s so deep actually. He understands that people want to feel — I believe that the biggest longing people have is to belong. And so great marketing actually doesn’t just sell you something. It makes you feel like you belong to a tribe. So anyway, long answer to your question, but that would be the one.