"What children's book changed the way you see the world?" Anita Silvey asked this question to more than one hundred of our most respected and admired leaders in society, and she learned about the books that shaped financiers, actors, singers, athletes, activists, artists, comic book creators, novelists, illustrators, teachers... Writers (Anna Quindlen, Sherman Alexie, Bobbie Ann Mason, Azar Nafisi, Angela Johnson, David McCullough, Ann Tyler,...

Elizabeth D. Samet and her students learned to romanticize the army "from the stories of their fathers and from the movies." For Samet, it was the old World War II movies she used to watch on TV, while her students grew up on Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike their teacher, however, these students, cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, have decided to turn make-believe into real life. West Point is a world away from...