A book also pushed me to become a medical doctor. I was deeply inspired by Torao Tokuda, a physician who founded a hospital group in the 1970s that tried to revolutionize the Japanese medical care system.

Yeah. Tim and I have talked about this a little bit. So, for me, books are all about the moment and the emotion that I’m in and the person I’m giving it to is in. and so, I can’t tell you that there’s one book that has predominated how I give because I love books, and I love to give books. And I carry books around. Even today, I brought two books for you to autograph that I’m giving away. So, there’s an act of giving. And a book is a wonderful way to convey something to another person. Books that I’ve loved giving away, Norman McClain’s A River Runs Through It . I read that book in so many different ways, in so many pieces. It totally influenced my life in terms of fly fishing and finding magic in words and that quiet space. He also wrote that book when he was 71 years old. Kind of only the really big book he wrote. It was at 71. And you think about all of this sort of bullshit about creative genius being in the young and all of that. As you get older, you start appreciating it. If Norman could do it at 71, maybe I could do it not quite at 71 yet. Another book I really liked, a more recent book, is Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams . Completely different reason. Just a really clever, smart book about how to organize businesses and enterprises for today’s world. And he takes this experiential army in Afghanistan and brings it over to sort of your life or my life and makes it kind of relevant and meaningful. I found it very influential. I’ve given away quite a few copies of James Nester’s book, The Deep, which you might have read, right. You’ve read his book.

I’m very suspicious about recommending books to people because there’s the risk they might listen to what you say. And if you’re recommending to them the book that is not the most valuable next book they should read, in a sense, you’re wronging them. So I don’t give people books that often. One thing I try to encourage people to do is to read more about music and the arts, not a particular book. But I say take the creators you love, whoever, whatever they may be, and read about them. If it’s The Beatles, great. If it’s Beethoven, and really dig into what you might think of as your hobbies, but to read about them in an intense way. And just think about Beethoven. How did he manage his career? What were his productivity tricks, what did he do wrong? And think through some of the questions you’ve written and talked about at length, but in the context of your cultural heroes. If it’s like, what do I tell people to read most often? I am not myself religious, but usually I’ll tell my non-religious friends they ought to go read the Bible. It’s a wonderfully deep and brilliant book and most non-religious people, even most religious people, barely know it, or Shakespeare.

As a child, I was fascinated with the book Ivanhoe . I love the story of knights and their heroism and altruism and fighting for a great cause. I kind of have a romantic notion of right and wrong and good and evil. But in terms of the book I’ve given away the most, of course that would be Bladesmithing with Murray Carter , of course the book that I first authored. It was the first of three books that I’ve authored. It’s a great instructional book on bladesmithing techniques in general, but more specifically the application of traditional Japanese bladesmithing techniques.