Fully Alive: Using the Lessons of the Amazon to Live Your Mission in Business and Life

Gage, CEO of energy-drink company Runa, hits too many notes familiar from other business memoirs in this debut. The book begins with Gage awaiting the results of a vote that could remove him from the company before flashing back to his youth. As a freshman at Brown, Gage struggled with competing desires: he wanted to please his parents and teachers but also itched to rebel against their expectations. Seeking a sense of direction and a mentor, he took time off and connected with a botanist studying in the Amazon. It was there that Gage first tasted guayusa, the tea which provides the main ingredient in Runa’s drinks. Gage remembers the experience as unremarkable, commenting that he wishes it could have been a dramatic moment of realization but that life doesn’t always provide one. Eventually, Gage found himself back at Brown and trying to start a company with some friends. While recounting Runa’s subsequent founding, Gage occasionally returns to the theme of lacking a clear-cut narrative, but he fits his experiences neatly enough into a familiar arc of discovery, revelation, and reflection. The story of Gage’s success works as a coming-of-age story but not as a particularly revelatory one. (Aug.)