Free By the Book by Pamela Paul

way through the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, the invasion of Panama and Desert Storm, my collaborator, Joe Persico, looked over at me one day and said: “Do you know how boring this stuff is? Let’s drop it. It’s becoming a ‘Then I had lunch with…’ book. Everyone knows this stuff, lived through it, and won’t be interested.”
    I refused and wrote it all out for two hundred more pages. Joe was right. In the seventeen years since it was published, I’ve gotten very few questions about any of that stuff, but there is still a lot of interest in the first half of the book. It is still selling. I learned my lesson, and my new book, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership , consists of just stand-alone stories and is half the size of the usual political memoir. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the genre has improved in recent years.
    If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? Have you ever written to an author?
    I would enjoy having lunch with J. K. Rowling. I’d probe her imagination and ask how she is dealing so well with her success and multimillionaire celebrity status. When I was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I wrote a letter to Stephen Ambrose after I read his classic Band of Brothers , about E Company, 506th Infantry, in World War II. I complimented him on the book and shared with him my pride in having a battalion of the 506th Infantry under my brigade command in the 1970s. I also once wrote your language expert Bill Safire, disagreeing with one of his On Language pronouncements. He met me more than halfway.
    Electronic or paper?
    I do both.
    What book made you want to become a writer?
    My checkbook. After thirty-five years of military pay and educating three kids through college, I needed to improve my finances. I was also moved by the success of my buddy Gen. Norm Schwarzkopf’s book, It Doesn’t Take a Hero . But what really did it was my agent, Marvin Josephson, and editor, Harry Evans, convincing me I had a good story to tell. I still feel strange being called a writer. I’m mostly a speaker.
    If somebody walked into your office while you were writing, what would they see?
    Three computers running, paper strewn all about, a television on behind me, a sense of chaos.
    If you had to recommend one book to a student of government, what would it be?
    There is none, and I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone. Government requires many disciplines and experiences. And even if you are widely read, it is still OJT, On-the-Job Training. Government is people, and until you know the people you can’t follow, govern, or lead them.
    What do you plan to read next?
    Sigh. That’s a problem. I keep sending new books to my e-reader, and I don’t know which one I’ll read next. Electronic books have become such an impulse and instinct purchase that I buy them constantly and can’t remember what’s on my e-shelf. When I do look, I often see titles I don’t recognize or don’t remember wanting or buying. I’ll get to some of them.
    Colin Powell is a former secretary of state, national security adviser, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His books include My American Journey and It Worked for Me .

Dave Eggers

    What book is on your night stand now?
    I’m reading a short story collection by Tom Barbash called Stay Up with Me . It’s not out yet, and probably won’t be for a year or so, but it’s so good.
    What was the last truly great book you read? Do you remember the last time you said to someone, “You absolutely must read this book”?
    I’m in a weird position with that question, given we publish books at McSweeney’s, and every one of them has to pass that “You must read this book!” test before we decide to publish it. I hope I can mention one recent book we put out called Inside This Place, Not of It , edited by Ayelet