Addendum?added 7/26/26
This is the latest 2021 edition of The Empty Circle by Samuel Wilson, written in 1991 and now including the original illustrations
The material could also serve as the foundation for a screenplay adaptation of Shooting to Kill.
Since the original edition, the book has approximately doubled in length.
At thirty-four, Raymond Dierker had reached the pinnacle of success.
A rising executive at one of the fastest-growing companies in America, he had done everything right?worked harder, climbed faster, and delivered results. From a $2.90-an-hour computer operator to Vice President in less than five years, he was living the American success story.
Then everything collapsed.
A single moment?an argument, a breakdown, a forced stop?landed him in a psychiatric unit with nothing left to prove and nowhere left to go.
What followed was not simply recovery.
It was revelation.
Surrounded by people the system had overlooked?an addict searching for one honest friend, workers pushed to exhaustion, and a quiet heiress finding meaning in poetry?he began to understand something he had never recognized before:
Success had not filled the most important part of his life.
It had left it empty.
In that stillness, an unexpected journey begins?through old TIME magazines, a rediscovered vision of "a shining city on a hill," and the realization that the system he trusted could measure performance...but not value.
The Empty Circle is a powerful and deeply personal story of success, collapse, and awakening?one that challenges what we believe about achievement, identity, and what truly matters.
This is not just a memoir.
It is the beginning of a transformation.
