The Third Door by Alex Banayan

THE THIRD DOOR by Alex Banayan is subtitled “The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World's Most Successful People Launched Their Careers” and while it is filled with advice, it really is about that quest.  As I read, I wanted to see Banayan succeed; more importantly, I wanted my students to see that he failed or nearly failed several times and instead of giving up, he persevered. This book is intentionally written to appeal to the millennial generation and I think it will definitely do so – just look at enthusiastic reviews on GoodReads and Amazon, for example.

Banayan was a freshman at USC when he decided to write a book about successful people and this is his subsequent story; he interviews Maya Angelou, Microsoft’s Qi Lu (pronounced Chee Loo, developer of Bing search engine), Steven Spielberg, and Sugar Ray Leonard as just a few examples. As shown in this inspiring trailer for the book, Banayan stresses the idea of a “third door” – beyond traditional means or special privileges to achieve objectives:

  

There are many connections -- The Third Teacher book readily came to mind as did other articles about the library as a third place, proving community outside home and school. All of which complement Banayan’s quest and the idea of looking at a situation from new perspectives.

Yes, he is young and the writing could be more polished, but his enthusiasm shines through. Banayan definitely reinforced the importance of a growth mindset and he sent me to more book ideas like Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek or Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness.  I will be investigating those further and recommending THE THIRD DOOR to our business teachers who are always looking for titles to suggest to their classes. In addition, Fortune just recently published this list of best business biographies, many of which can be found in our collection.