Falling with Purpose (Paperback)

Michael Norkus

ISBN 13: 9798995891550

Published by Am Publishing, 2026

About this Item

Paperback. In 1973, a woman walked into a Harvard Square cafe and sat down at the next table. He reached for her jacket without asking. She stopped him cold.He was a German student at Harvard Business School, trained to find the pattern beneath any problem. She was an American psychologist who saw through people before they finished their first sentence. He had never been seen so clearly. She had never met someone so determined to know himself - and so far from managing it.Falling with Purpose moves between their courtship and the world that formed him: postwar Germany, coal dust and factory floors, soccer and jazz, first love, family silence, and the early days of the Boston Consulting Group. It is the story of a man who mastered strategy, built a career, and nearly lost the one thing that made any of it matter.At its center is a single German word: Durchblick - the ability to see through confusion to what truly matters. Michael Norkus spent decades applying that clarity to markets, companies, and business problems. It took considerably longer to understand that the same clarity, turned inward, leads somewhere simpler - and that love is not a feeling but a choice, made again and again, at real cost.Part memoir, part love story, part portrait of postwar Germany and the birth of modern business strategy, Falling with Purpose is for readers of Wallace Stegner, Sebastian Junger, and Phil Knight's Shoe Dog - and for anyone who has ever been very good at the wrong things.The why is love. Not as something solved. As something chosen. A German man's journey from postwar Europe to Harvard Business School, where a fateful encounter sparks a quest to understand the hidden patterns of love, ambition, and happiness. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9798995891550

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Falling with Purpose (Paperback)
• Publisher: Am Publishing
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798995891550
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In 1973, a woman walked into a Harvard Square café and sat down at the next table. He reached for her jacket without asking. She stopped him cold.

He was a German student at Harvard Business School, trained to find the pattern beneath any problem. She was an American psychologist who saw through people before they finished their first sentence. He had never been seen so clearly. She had never met someone so determined to know himself — and so far from managing it.

Falling with Purpose moves between their courtship and the world that formed him: postwar Germany, coal dust and factory floors, soccer and jazz, first love, family tension, and the early days of the Boston Consulting Group. It is the story of a man who mastered strategy, built a career, and nearly lost the one thing that made any of it matter.

At its center is a single German word: Durchblick — the ability to see through confusion to what truly matters. Michael Norkus spent decades applying that clarity to markets, companies, and business problems. It took considerably longer to understand that the same clarity, turned inward, leads somewhere simpler — and that love is not a feeling but a choice, made again and again, at real cost.

Part memoir, part love story, part portrait of postwar Germany and the birth of modern business strategy, Falling with Purpose is for readers of Wallace Stegner, Sebastian Junger, and Phil Knight's Shoe Dog — and for anyone who has ever been very good at the wrong things.

The why is love. Not as something solved. As something chosen.

About the Author

Michael Norkus was born in Germany and grew up in the postwar Ruhr Valley. He received law degrees from the University of Paris and the University of Bonn, and a doctorate from the University of Hamburg. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975 and went on to become a partner at BCG in Boston and Munich. In 1986, he founded Alliance Consulting Group, a strategy consultancy whose clients have included Coca-Cola, Disney, and Harley-Davidson. He and his wife, Andrea - whom he met at a Cambridge café in September 1973 - have two children, Tyler and Vanessa, and live in Boston and on Martha's Vineyard.