Is your CEO reading "Moby Dick"?

How many of your leaders are reading Emerson or “The Federalist Papers”? Not many, right? So why do they say they are?

It has been my observation that people will almost always stretch the truth when they tell us how little sleep they need, how fast they have driven from New York City to Pittsburgh, and what books they have read recently.

My propensity toward cynicism was not diminished by a midsummer feature in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Books Businessmen Read.” When I compare my reading with that of these business people, I can see why I am not rich and they are.

I get around, and so do you. We talk with all sorts of people—writers, editors, designers, photographers, printers. We parry witticisms with university professors, wonder with our barber about what Ronnie knows about evolution, and seek to understand the epistemology of cab drivers. I never, never run into people who read books like H. L. Mencken’s Newspaper Days? Do you?