Richard Brodie dropped out of Harvard to join Bill Gates in the personal-computer revolution at Microsoft. There he wrote the first version of Microsoft Word before becoming Gates's technical assistant. His books Getting Past OK and Virus of the Mind are international bestsellers, published in many languages across the globe. In retirement, Richard sampled many personal-growth groups (as he put it, "I joined cults as a hobby") and boiled down what he thought were the best ideas into his first book. As part of that research he saw the importance of the idea of "memes" -- contagious ideas that evolve in our culture -- and realized there wasn't a book about them, so he wrote one: Virus of the Mind.