The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America's Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World (and Change Your Life)

Entrepreneurship is the hammer that Schramm wields, and everything looks like a nail. He calls the freedom to start one's own business key to the nation's survival, "the only uniquely American resource at our disposal" and "the only answer if we hope to continue to thrive." Schramm makes a solid case for emphasizing entrepreneurial thinking and policy; he notes that globalization has stripped away any U.S. advantage in technology, education and manufacturing, and argues that big companies must remodel themselves after technologically savvy startups. But as with any monomaniac, his rigidity is hard to take seriously. ("Aren't there other solutions?" he asks on the book's first page, answering: "No.") His "sweeping manifesto" rails against bureaucracy, the Small Business Administration and "big business, big government, and big labor." Some readers will raise eyebrows at his take on entrepreneurship's role in democracy's rise, at his rant about antibusiness attitudes in the academy or at his contention that "entrepreneurship must be the basis of our foreign policy." Schramm may be right in insisting that only entrepreneurial capitalism "will allow us to continue to enjoy our standard of living," but his perspective is too narrow to draw in many people who don't already share it. (Oct.)