“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
                                                            Harry Truman

I’m fortunate to belong to a Book Club. For the past five years eight of us have gotten together every six to eight weeks to read books we wouldn’t have read were it not for our group. We meet in each other’s homes, the host selecting the dinner menu as well as the book choice. Our unspoken rules: be there, no business books, read the whole book, listen and speak up, and be open-minded while disagreeing. (We’ve “fired” three over the years, recruiting three who live the rules.)

Our diversity (although we’re a men’s-night-out club) enriches our discussions. We have three business owners, a wealth portfolio advisor, a judge, an accountant, an orthopedic surgeon turned entrepreneur when he started an award-winning surgery hospital, and me. Our outlooks have range: five Californians, a Lebanese immigrant, and two Midwesterners; a conscientious objector and an F-16 fighter pilot; a couple NPR/PBS liberals and a couple Wall Street Journal editorial page fans, the rest centrists; two in second marriages, one a widower, the rest long married. It’s rewarding to exchange views that are thoughtful and well founded, with no fear of ideological, in-your-face, disrespectful shrillness, or silent stonewalling.

Here’s some of what we’ve been reading:

• Lincoln’s Virtues, by William Miller
• The Innovator’s Prescription: A Descriptive Solution for Health Care, by C. M. Christiansen, J. H. Grossman, and J. Want
• The Razor’s Edge, by Somerset Maugham
• Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, by I. Carson and V. V. Vaitneeswaran
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, by J. Meacham
• Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street, by M. Lewis
• Five Days in London: May 1940, by J. Lucas
• The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us, by R. Meredith
• Justice For All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, by J. Newton
• His Excellency: George Washington, by J. Ellis
• Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by M. Pollan
• The Angle of Repose, by W. Stegner
• Mexifornia, Five Years Later: Victor Davis Hanson
• The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by TJ Stiles