(To go deeper into Hopper’s story and how it merged with the early history of computers and software, see Kurt W. Beyer’s superb book, Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age.)

It’s not about finding what you can do better than others, but about finding what you can do exceptionally well relative to other ways you could expend yourself.

As a prism of history, biography attracts and holds the reader’s interest in the larger subject. People are interested in other people, in the fortunes of the individual …. [Biography] encompasses the universal in the particular.”

(Barbara Tuchman)

There is no level of success or reputation or money that fully buys you out of the tax; even at the zenith of a long and fruitful career, the tax remains.

Bill Meehan, intellectual provocateur and caring friend, encouraged and challenged me to widen and deepen the scope of what this book is all about. “Don’t waste your time— or your words— on the little questions,” he’d hammer at me. “Go for the big questions, the questions of truth and wisdom and meaning. You need to be more of a poet and less of an analyst, more of a philosopher and less of a strategist” I’ve always built my books on a foundation of rigorous research and empirical evidence, and What to Make of a Life is no exception.