She said “Parachute” had come along at the beginning of a historic shift, when corporate strategies like outsourcing, subcontracting, downsizing and mergers were starting to erode traditional notions of job security. The idea that you could stay in one job for a lifetime began coming undone in the early 1970s, and “Parachute’s” perennial sales reflected, at least in part, this new reality.

Mr. Bolles said he had come to acknowledge that connection over time, but, he added wryly, the success of “Parachute” had also reflected the fact that it was a pretty good book.

Richard Nelson Bolles was born on March 19, 1927, in Milwaukee, the first of three children of Donald Clinton Bolles, an editor for The Associated Press, and the former Frances Fifield, a homemaker.

His brother, Donald Jr., who followed his father into journalism, was killed in 1976 in Phoenix when a bomb detonated under his car. Don Bolles was then working as an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, and the killing was widely believed to be linked to a series of exposés he had been writing about corporate and organized crime in the state. The assassination resulted in the prosecution of one person but remained largely unsolved.

After serving in the Navy at the tail end of World War II, Richard Bolles studied chemical engineering for two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then transferred to Harvard, where he earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude with a major in physics.

While still an undergraduate, he was moved by a sermon he heard one Sunday at church about a critical shortage of ministers. After graduation, instead of accepting a lucrative job offer in the chemical industry, he decided to become an Episcopal minister.

He attended General Theological Seminary in New York, where he received a master’s degree in New Testament studies and was ordained in 1953. He served as a rector at several churches in northern New Jersey, including St. John’s in Passaic, where he often counseled teenagers on sex and drug use.