THE NEW AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR: How to Get Off the Fast Track and into a Business of Your Own

A skimpy, smart-alecky appreciation of the joys of going it alone in business. Several factors, according to Fierro, make such a course advisable: the loosening of federal regulation, the re-emergence of optimism, the aging of the domestic population, the decline of job security (due to budgetary constraints in government and the prevalence of mergers in the private sector). That said, he covers familiar ground: the preparation of business plans (for prospective backers as well as personal use), realistic budget projections, the conduct of market research, promotion, recruitment of outside experts (accountants, attorneys, et al.), the pros and cons of organizational alternatives (sole proprietorships, partnerships, incorporation), and venture-capital sources. There is little, however, in the way of advice on where opportunity might knock, let alone how to cash in on its arrival. And such lessons as might have been learned from the illustrative success stories--of, among others, money-market fund pioneer James Benham and Prime Time publisher Barbara Hertz--are lost in a welter of fawning prose. (Other Fierro prose is just indigestible: ""after all, if the government welshes on its debt, it don't make no difference, kid, whose paper you're holding."") One of the more dispensable entries in a crowded field.