He came to Harvard with a strategy for everything, and met the woman who showed him what he'd missed. A memoir of a Jewish-German romance, and the fifty-year life that followed.
What makes you the person I want to see at breakfast? She asked it once. It changed everything.
From the coal-dusted Ruhr Valley to Harvard: what must be lost before you know who you are.
The German word for seeing through confusion to what matters. In business, it's an advantage. In life, it's everything.
Advance Praise
"We both made a decision that any serious strategist would have called a mistake: we chose our families over our careers. Neither of us has spent a single day regretting it... It is a surprising book — part love story, part strategic memoir, and a case study in what strategy cannot teach."
"Reads so well it is difficult to put down — the narrative simply compels you to know what happens next... what ultimately wins in this beautiful story is wisdom — a triumph all the more meaningful for having been gained through pain."
"Brings postwar Germany vividly to life with rare authenticity — the weight of a shattered country rebuilding itself... Michael traces the growth of a man decoupling from expectations to find himself. A magical story about evolving. Bravo!"
"Clean, thought-provoking prose that prompts insightful conversations about ambition, purpose, and what matters in life. A warmhearted book for the business-minded who just want to find their way with a loving partner by their side."
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 silence, and the strategy rooms of BCG. At its center is a single German word: Durchblick — the ability to see through confusion to what truly matters. In business, that clarity is a weapon. In love, you must put the weapon down.
For anyone who has ever been very good at the wrong things.
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For Book Clubs & Reading Groups
Falling With Purpose was written to be discussed. The Jewish-German love story at its heart, the immigrant journey, and the search for purpose at 80 spark powerful conversations.
A beautifully formatted 12-question discussion guide and a one-sheet PDF are emailed to your organizer before the meeting, ready to print, share, or pull up on your phone.
The love story, the immigrant journey, building a life and a business from scratch: these questions take your group beyond the book and into conversations you won't forget.
The author himself joins your Zoom call for 30–45 minutes of live Q&A. He shares the stories behind the stories, answers every question, and gives your group something most readers never get: direct access to the person who lived it.
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Falling With Purpose
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From the book
It took fifty-two years to tell this story. In June 2025, Andrea and I celebrated fifty years of marriage. For our anniversary, she asked again the question she had first asked in 1973, just after we met: "Tell me your story. Where do you come from? What makes you the person I want to see at breakfast?"
"The why is love. Not as something solved. As something chosen."
At the time, I answered as best I could. But I did not know my own story. I knew the episodes. I did not yet recognize the pattern. I spent much of my life cultivating clarity in the outer world, where strategy is rewarded and problems are expected to yield to analysis. It took considerably longer to understand that love requires a deeper version of the same clarity.
When your luck walks to the table next to you, you better be ready to grab it by the jacket.
We'll email it to you within a day or two.
For Book Clubs
Free · 20–45 minutes · Recording encouraged · Limited dates each month
Michael will reply personally with available dates. If you asked for the Discussion Guide, it's on its way to your inbox.
Thank you for bringing Falling With Purpose to your group.
