With solid authority, Baker examines the entrepreneurial idea and how it has shaped the nature of the work we do.
The social impact of entrepreneurialism.
According to Baker, a Harvard lecturer, there has long been tension in the United States between corporate work—stressing systems, hierarchy, and a steady paycheck—and entrepreneurialism, with an emphasis on innovation, risk, and individualism. The valorization of the entrepreneur has moved in cycles, which Baker tracks through the 20th century and into the 21st. There was an acknowledgment that corporations could easily become stagnant and needed an occasional shot of entrepreneurial energy to thrive. One answer, pioneered by sales groups like Amway and Avon, was to minimize the number of employees and instead build an army of contractors. This strategy developed into attempts by corporate leaders to foster an entrepreneurial spirit among employees. It makes sense, but Baker sees clear downsides. “Entrepreneurialism, essentially, adds another set of obligations to the work ethic: creation as well as execution, passion as well as perseverance,” he says. “It’s exhausting.” At the same time, tiers of jobs were farmed out, creating the gig economy. Stability was exchanged for precarious autonomy. This does much to explain the epidemic of burnout and despair, according to Baker, even while the benefits of lower costs and increased productivity flow relentlessly upward. He is able to keep this sprawling narrative on course, although he offers no real solution, aside from suggesting that “our collective commitment to entrepreneurialism—the idea that everyone should strive to be entrepreneurial—isn’t helping.” Nevertheless, this book will be of interest to anyone interested in business culture and social trends.
With solid authority, Baker examines the entrepreneurial idea and how it has shaped the nature of the work we do.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780674293601
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
