The travel memoir Mediterranean Summer—A Season on France’s Cote d’Azur and Italy’s Costa Bella, a summer reading list favorite, contained a great epiphany. The author, a young, inexperienced chef, is abruptly obliged to step up his game when he is unexpectedly hired to handle a summer of cooking aboard a luxury yacht for a demanding Italian couple. Until he held this position, he thought his main duty was to follow his employer’s lead. Their demands confused him—why wasn’t serving stellar meals enough?—until the yacht owner insisted he be more of a leader by challenging her ideas and being creative on his own. Why hadn’t he done this without being prodded, he wondered? What was holding him back?