George Mitchell was a working-class boy from Maine who grew up to be the majority leader of the U.S. Senate and, as envoy to Northern Ireland, one of the most respected peace negotiators in the world. Now 81, he explains his ethos in a memoir out this month: “I feel a great obligation to be helpful to a society from which I’ve received so much.”
A version of this article appeared in the June 2015 issue (p.124) of Harvard Business Review.
