(FORTUNE Magazine) – AFTER A CHIEF EXECUTIVE finishes the giant helping of reading he is required to consume, it seems remarkable that he would have any appetite left. But as FORTUNE found in an informal survey, many C.E.O.s delight in reading for pleasure and to broaden their outlook, some voraciously. While their interests range as widely as human curiosity, a few trends are apparent, outlining what the executive mind is hungry for -- and being nourished by -- in the late Eighties. Fascinating quirks of taste fill in the picture. Making time to read books is not easy for a C.E.O. Last year FORTUNE found that eyeballing business reports takes 15 hours of a typical chief executive's 59-hour workweek. That sort of schedule has nearly torn books from some C.E.O.s' lives. ''My reading in depth has taken a beating since I became president and then chairman over a year ago,'' confesses Atlantic Richfield's Lodwrick Cook, 58, a bookworm in his Southern boyhood. He speaks for legions of corporate chiefs: ''Dealing with company paperwork comes first. Second, | current periodicals and newspapers. When I have time, on long plane trips or at home, I grab a book -- biography or history. Quite often I don't finish.'' The C.E.O.s FORTUNE queried concentrate their after-hours reading in four areas: escapism, business, contemporary culture and world affairs, and inspirational writing by and about great leaders. The titles most often mentioned in the first group were spy thrillers and suspenseful novels based on current affairs. A dozen C.E.O.s named best-sellers that fill in plausible scenarios with authentic military and political details. The standout, from boardroom to Oval Office: The Hunt for Red October, a 1984 first novel by Maryland insurance agent Tom Clancy. It tracks a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine with a mutiny aboard. Hunt became a best-seller after President Reagan said he enjoyed it. ''I loved it,'' says John D. Macomber, 59, who headed Celanese for ten years before its merger with American Hoechst in March. He read the book aloud to son Billy, 13, and a friend. But Macomber was ''bored silly'' by Red Storm Rising, Clancy's far longer 1986 tale about a contest for oil that ignites World War III. It didn't ignite many C.E.O.s. Ford's Donald Petersen, 60, an ex-Marine, escaped into James Clavell's Whirlwind, on the Iranian revolution. Adman William E. Phillips, 57, chairman of Ogilvy Group and a Navy veteran of the Korean war, took to Stephen Coonts's Flight of the Intruder, about Navy fliers in Vietnam. On airplanes, British spy novels by Frederick Forsyth and John le Carre intrigue Squibb's Richard Furlaud, 64, and Seagram's Edgar M. Bronfman, 57. While books on business naturally attract executives, several chiefs show acute interest in a subcategory: business and the Oriental mind. Bill Gates, 31, billionaire chairman of Microsoft, says his favorite fiction of the past year was Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, a 1984 first novel by David Payne about the illegitimate son of an aristocratic Chinese mother and an American heir to an industrial fortune. The hero leaves his monastery for Wall Street and eventually takes over his forebears' company, trying to reconcile Eastern spirituality with Western materialism -- Tao with Dow. Wall Streeter George L. Ball, 48, of Prudential-Bache Securities, applies Taoist teachings from The Book of Internal Exercises by Stephen T. Chang with Rick Miller. ''This is a compilation of ancient Chinese yoga exercises that energize body and mind in concert,'' explains Ball, who reads five books a week. ''These exercises help you to avoid stress and concentrate.'' WORKS ON Japanese business particularly fascinate, especially Kaisha, the Japanese Corporation by James C. Abegglen and George Stalk Jr. Gates liked it, and Dean W. Freed, 63, of EG&G, which makes electronic instruments, gave it to every manager in his Wellesley, Massachusetts, headquarters. Apple Computer's John Sculley, 48, who reads three or four books a week, loved Kaisha, but he was also impressed with Smaller Is Better: Japan's Mastery of the Miniature. It is by O-Young Lee, a Korean who interprets Japan from an Oriental point of view for inscrutable Occidentals. Says Sculley: ''It gave me a perspective on the interrelationships of Kabuki theater, haiku poetry, and how the Japanese approach manufacturing, how simplicity is the ultimate in sophistication.'' Among more general business books, David Halberstam's The Reckoning: The Challenge to America's Greatness, about competition between Japanese and American automakers, attracted Lotus Development chief Jim P. Manzi, 36. Ford's Petersen has read The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business by Ralph Nader and William Taylor. Among scholarly works, Grey Advertising Chairman Edward H. Meyer, 60, liked Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy. Innovation preoccupies almost every C.E.O. Intrapreneuring by Gifford Pinchot III appealed to Cook of Atlantic Richfield. He explains, ''It takes the notion of entrepreneurship, which most people think of as somebody inventing something in a garage and turning it into a million-dollar business, and tells how successful corporations can try to capture that kind of creativeness.'' Keeping up with contemporary culture and world affairs combines the business and personal interests of adman Meyer. He finds fiction as useful as nonfiction and prefers subjective novels to action-packed suspense tales. ''I'd much rather read about contemporary people's feelings, desires, aspirations, loves,'' he says. A recent choice: Philip Roth's The Counterlife. He adds, ''I'm reading more women now, Ann Beattie and Amy Hempel. Women handle feelings better.'' For taking the pulse of the consumer, Meyer values the work of historian Garry Wills: ''Reagan's America I read because his portrayal of the country and society that produced and influence Reagan's value system is fascinating.'' General Mills Chairman H. Brewster ''Bruce'' Atwater Jr. cites Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life by Robert N. Bellah and others. It impressed Atwater by telling of ''the loss of community feeling as people move from area to area and company to company, and how to get this feeling back.'' Books on contemporary culture have been exceedingly important to Apple's John Sculley. He cites Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man as one of the most influential books he ever read. ''He was predicting back in 1962 things that are just becoming a reality in the late 1980s,'' says Sculley. ''He looked at all the media that impact our lives as a collage, of how it was changing Western peoples' whole perspective.'' For young executives Sculley suggests The Turning Point by physicist Fritjof Capra, which predicts a new culture from a merging of science and society. He also recommends Cathedral by David Macaulay; it tells ''how constructing one took 100 years of eclectic process.'' C.E.O.s are fascinated by the problems statesmen face. Atwater found that Sacred Rage: The Crusade of Modern Islam by Robin Wright ''added to my knowledge of what's going on over there.'' He considers Zbigniew Brzezinski's Game Plan: How to Conduct the U.S.-Soviet Contest ''an excellent book about the whole nuclear thing.'' Seagram's Bronfman says The Soviet Paradox by Seweryn Bialer ''gave me insights into the Soviet system -- their problems with satellites and the question of leadership.'' In The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, Chase Manhattan's Willard C. Butcher, 61, explored postwar U.S. foreign policy. Chief executives grow passionate over books by and about the great. Nothing ranks higher in that category than Donald Petersen's favorite: ''More than any other writing, I have found the Bible helps give meaning to life, particularly the Sermon on the Mount.'' In Matthew, it begins ''Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'' Other chiefs cite mere mortals as inspiration. Bill Gates says My Years With General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan Jr. influenced him. Sloan ran GM from 1937 to 1956 and published his book in 1964. Ford: The Men and the Machine by Robert Lacey held Ian Ross, 59, of AT&T Bell Laboratories only through the first half. ''That's a nice history of how the Ford empire was built and what Henry Ford did,'' notes Ross. ''The second half is a soap opera.'' OTHER LEGENDS who still inspire C.E.O.s: Lincoln and Churchill. Walter J. Connolly Jr., 58, of the Bank of New England, says Carl Sandburg's multivolume Abraham Lincoln influenced him most. ''It is an exhaustive study of the enormous effort this man had to make to have an impact,'' he notes. ''It confirms that most important things happen as a result of day-to-day persistence and the effort of people. They don't happen by accident.'' John Macomber cites the same work as the most inspiring he ever read. Macomber was also impressed by Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874-1932 by William Manchester, a vivid portrayal of one of the century's titans. Churchill as author inspires English-born, Cambridge-educated Ian Ross of Bell Labs. ''His six-volume Second World War gives you an insight into how a man at the top of a country operates like a businessman, how he dealt with people, how he wrote his memos. He was a very good manager.'' Whether reading for diversion, information, or inspiration, chief executives find new perspectives. As Ed Meyer explains, ''When I read a book, it's like walking around an object and seeing it from a new angle. I haven't completed the circle yet, but each good book takes me a few degrees further around to a vision I hadn't had before.'' For these executives reading for pleasure, because it renews and enlightens them, is as necessary as all the rest they do.

CHART: THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE LIBRARY

C.E.O. RECENT CHOICES LIFETIME FAVORITES

Walter J. Connolly Jr. Red Storm Rising Abraham Lincoln Bank of New England Tom Clancy Carl Sandburg

Lodwrick M. Cook Intrapreneuring The Story of Civilization Atlantic Richfield Gifford Pinchot III series Will and Ariel Durant

Richard M. Furlaud It Vanity Fair Squibb Stephen King William M. Thackeray

William Gates III Kaisha My Years With General Motors Microsoft James C. Abegglen Alfred P. Sloan Jr. and George Stalk

Philip H. Geier Jr. Whirlwind Future Shock Interpublic Group of Cos. James Clavell Alvin Toffler

John D. Macomber Winston Spencer The Adventures of Celanese (1977-1987) Churchill, 1874-1932 Tom Sawyer William Manchester Mark Twain

Jim P. Manzi The Reckoning The Magic Mountain Lotus Development David Halberstam Thomas Mann

Donald E. Petersen The Big Boys The Bible Ford Motor Ralph Nader and William Taylor

Ian M. Ross Ford The Second World War AT&T Bell Laboratories Robert Lacey Winston Churchill

John Sculley The Society of Mind The Gutenberg Galaxy Apple Computer Marvin Minsky Marshall McLuhan

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