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THE AGE OF ENTERPRISE by  Kirkus Star

THE AGE OF ENTERPRISE

By

Pub Date: Oct. 6th, 1942
Publisher: Macmillan

In January, 1937, there appeared on the Macmillan list A History of The Business Man by Miriam Beard, an important book which compassed the whole of recorded civilization. Now comes The Age of Enterprise, which is the history of business in America, deliberately a background book, not a book on developments of the New Deal era. It is fascinating for anyone to whom industrial America is the real America. The authors, professors both, have avoided pedagogy and made it vital and human, giving lots of anecdotal and human interest material. Cross-sectioning their subject, they take industry, commerce, labor, agriculture, etc., and follow the thread chronologically within these brackets. It is the story of our nation through its railroads and rivers, its business initiative, its expansion from small farms to great agricultural empires. Its politics, its group pressures, its social and cultural aspects, all are there -- those who have helped, those who have hindered. No bones are made of the weaknesses, the chicanery, the inhumanity which have gone into the building of American industry. As background for those who would understand the needs for social reform in business, it is important. For any business man, it should be must reading.