Agreed on the autobiography's excellence. Among other things, Watson Jr. sadly recounts how he and his father drove to colleges around the Northeast US looking for one that would accept the son and his mediocre academic record (Watson was likely dyslexic, or had some other learning disability); Brown is the one that reluctantly does so.

Wartime service as a pilot was the first time Watson Jr. found himself good at anything, and he expected to stay flying until he was pulled back to IBM. He had built contacts in Russia during the war, and used that experience when serving as the US ambassador to the Soviet Union after IBM.