No one climbs
alone.
Self-improvement is good. Choosing people who improve you is better.
Former Forbes publisher Jeff Cunningham spent twenty years interviewing remarkable people. Lift reveals the three hidden forces that changed their lives, from Warren Buffett to Michael Phelps to Nelson Mandela.
Find your First. Build your Circle. Choose your Room.
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Coming October 20, 2026
“Every reader will finish this book remembering the first person who saw who they could be, and wondering whose life they might yet help lift.”
— Barbara Barrett, 25th Secretary of the Air Force
“Insightful and entertaining, Lift debunks the myth that our ‘self-made heroes’ climbed alone.”
—William R. Kerr, Harvard Business School
"I have never felt more powerfully free, more my own man, than when I was a small part of an organized resistance to the power that imprisoned me." — Senator John McCain
Across business, sports, politics, and war, the same three forces were at work.
Warren Buffett, investor and philanthropist
Dr. Reatha Clark King, chemist and Fortune 500 director
Malcolm Forbes, media tycoon
Donald Trump, U.S. president
Michael Phelps, most decorated Olympian in history
Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, Nobel Peace Prize laureates
John McCain, senator and presidential nominee
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs
David Petraeus, four-star general and CIA director
Nikki Haley, governor and UN ambassador
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian dissident
Lou Lenart and Allen Cunningham, freedom fighters
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Cunningham is the former publisher of Forbes, where he led the magazine through the rise of the Forbes 400. He went on to run Zip2, Elon Musk’s first company, and served as chairman or board director of more than ten public companies. As a professor of leadership at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird and Cronkite Schools, he hosted the award-winning interview series Iconic Voices, featuring candid interviews with Warren Buffett, Michael Phelps, General David Petraeus, and other global leaders. His book, Lift, distills those encounters into lessons on achievement, resilience, and the relationships that shape extraordinary lives.
Ask Jeff a question about Lift:
“Jeff Cunningham reveals how extraordinary lives are shaped long before a résumé exists.”
—RICHARD C. ADKERSON, chairman of the board of Freeport-McMoRa