The Pursuit of Excellence: The Uncommon Behaviors of the World's Most Productive Achievers

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WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.

—CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Howard Thurman is a name you have probably never heard before. Born in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1899, he grew up in a time when discrimination was legal and lynching was common. Howard’s grandmother, Nancy, raised him after his father died of pneumonia when Howard was just seven years old. Nancy was of the generation of African Americans who had been slaves in antebellum America. She didn’t know how to read or write. From these humble beginnings as an African American boy raised by an illiterate former slave in the depths of the Jim Crow South, Howard would later go on to graduate as Morehouse College’s valedictorian in 1923. ...