Reading & recommendations
Five questions about books you pass on, books that changed you, gaps on your list, and long-form work that stayed with you.
5 questions, 227 answers on the record, from 210 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.
Which book reshaped how you think, and in what way?
Founder of Teach For America; chief executive of Teach For All
The Fountainhead , I think, pretty much saved me in the initial years of Teach For America. I loved that book, but I’m not sure books were the seminal thing that guided my path. ...
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2013
41st President of the United States, 1989–1993
One of the historians here in Williamsburg talked about War and Peace. I had to read that in school. It was an inspiring, lengthy treatise. I read it twice. It taught me a lot about life.
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1995
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
In history I decided to begin with Gibbon.
Recorded · Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (Thornton Butterworth, 1930), Project Gutenberg Canada · 1930
Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.
Co-founder of Microsoft; co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
2 answers United States b. 1955
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
2 answers South Africa 1931–2021
Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953
2 answers New Zealand 1919–2008
Writer and human rights advocate; Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 1986
2 answers United States 1928–2016
Investor; early finance executive at PayPal and Palantir
2 answers United States
Neurosurgeon; chair of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
2 answers United States b. 1957
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1979–1990; Leader of the Conservative Party 1975–1990; MP for Finchley 1959–1992
2 answers United Kingdom 1925–2013
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997-2009; Nobel Peace Prize 2005
2 answers Egypt b. 1942
Co-founder of LinkedIn; partner at Greylock Partners
2 answers United States b. 1967
Chief executive and later chairman of Semco Partners, Brazil
2 answers Brazil b. 1959
War correspondent and author; co-director of the documentary Restrepo
2 answers United States b. 1962
Stem cell biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2012
2 answers Japan b. 1962
General
Twelve questions in FLAPSS wording — taste, daily life, craft, failure, and who formed you. The place to start if you have no idea where to start.
Craft & work
Six questions about how you work, what your job really is, and the advice your field gets wrong.
Daily life
Six questions about how your days start, what you refuse, and the small habits you keep.