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The brilliant creator of NPR's Planet Money podcast and award-winning New Yorker staff writer explains our current economy: laying out its internal logic and revealing the transformative hope it offers for millions of people to thrive as they never have before. Contrary to what you may have heard, the middle class is not dying and robots are not stealing our jobs. In fact, writes Adam Davidson—one of our leading public voices on economic issues—the twenty-first-century economic paradigm offers new ways of making money, fresh paths toward professional fulfillment, and unprecedented opportunities for curious, ambitious individuals to combine the things they love with their careers. Drawing on the stories of average people doing exactly this—an accountant overturning his industry, a sweatshop owner's daughter fighting for better working conditions, an Amish craftsman meeting the technological needs of Amish farmers—as well as the latest academic research, Davidson shows us how the twentieth-century economy of scale has given way in this century to an economy of passion. He makes clear, too, that though the adjustment has brought measures of dislocation, confusion, and even panic, these are most often the result of a lack of understanding. The Passion Economy delineates the ground rules of the new economy, and armed with these, we begin to see how we can succeed in it according to its own terms—intimacy, insight, attention, automation, and, of course, passion. An indispensable road map and a refreshingly optimistic take on our economic future.
The brilliant creator of NPR's Planet Money podcast and award-winning New Yorker staff writer explains our current economy: laying out its internal logic and revealing the transformative hope it offers for millions of people to thrive as they never have before. Contrary to what you may have heard, the middle class is not dying and robots are not stealing our jobs. In fact, writes Adam Davidson—one of our leading public voices on economic issues—the twenty-first-century economic paradigm offers new ways of making money, fresh paths toward professional fulfillment, and unprecedented opportunities for curious, ambitious individuals to combine the things they love with their careers. Drawing on the stories of average people doing exactly this—an accountant overturning his industry, a sweatshop owner's daughter fighting for better working conditions, an Amish craftsman meeting the technological needs of Amish farmers—as well as the latest academic research, Davidson shows us how the twentieth-century economy of scale has given way in this century to an economy of passion. He makes clear, too, that though the adjustment has brought measures of dislocation, confusion, and even panic, these are most often the result of a lack of understanding. The Passion Economy delineates the ground rules of the new economy, and armed with these, we begin to see how we can succeed in it according to its own terms—intimacy, insight, attention, automation, and, of course, passion. An indispensable road map and a refreshingly optimistic take on our economic future.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book
When I think about the change in the economy, the change that has shifted the United States and most of the rest of the world from one sort of economic system to an entirely different one, I think about my dad and my grandfather and how hard it was for them to understand each other.
My father’s father, Stanley, was born in 1917 and died a century later, still a tall, proud man with a thick head of hair that was naturally black until his last decade. Stanley looked to me like Superman: strong chin, chest pushed forward, posture erect. He didn’t have time for frivolity. He was a serious man who did serious work. With his young grandchildren, he had a routine: a firm handshake followed by a gift of a twenty-dollar bill and some vague homily about doing good work, after which we were dismissed. I cannot remember ever speaking to him when I was young; I only recall smiling, shaking hands, and rushing off. When I became an adult and, to his surprise and mine, a reporter covering economics, I was able to talk with him about the one topic he truly loved: business.
My dad (also named Stanley, though he has always gone by his middle name, Jack) could not be more different. He is an actor who, for as long as I can remember, has told me that the most wonderful part of his profession is that you remain child- like your entire life. As I write this, my dad is eighty-three and has maintained an imaginative, exuberant view of the world. He is riveted by children and loves to hear every word my young son says, after which he calls out, “Did you hear that? He made up an amazing story!” My dad has always been fascinated by pretty much everything—science, the news, art, history, sports. There is only one subject he has always found unbearably boring, perhaps a bit evil, and entirely unworthy of discussion: business.
In a sense, this book is a reconciliation of the conflict between these two Stanleys, these two men who lived in the same country at the same time but might as well have been on entirely different planets. For most of the twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of men and women were forced to make a choice when it came to work: follow the money or follow their passion; become like my grandfather or become like my dad. But now, more than ever before, business and art, profit and passion, are linked. They have come together in a way that would have made no sense to either of the Stanleys in the past.
To illuminate the transition, I describe and celebrate in this book, let me tell you more about my grandfather, since he is a pretty representative stand-in for the entire twentieth- century economy. Stanley Jacob Davidson, Sr., was born in New England to young parents who were cut off from their own families. His father was a Jewish immigrant whose parents had disowned him—even practiced mourning rituals as if he had died—when he impregnated and then married a Christian dance-hall girl. The dance-hall girl was, herself, alienated from her family—a rough clan barely eking out a living in a remote corner of Maine. The new broke and broken family in Worcester, Massachusetts, faced unending crises, culminating in Stanley’s father’s death of tuberculosis when my grandfather was only five. His mother, overwhelmed, put Stanley and his brother in an orphanage for much of a year before taking them out again with the provision that, even as grade schoolers, they would need to work and bring money to the family. Decades later, Stanley was still prouder of his childhood business (he bought hens, built an incubator, and sold eggs to neighbors) than of anything else he would go on...
About the Author-
ADAM DAVIDSON is the cofounder of NPR's Planet Money podcast and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he covers economics and business. Previously he was an economics writer for The New York Times Magazine. He has won many of journalism's most prestigious awards, including a Peabody for his coverage of the financial crisis.
Reviews-
November 4, 2019 Success in a downsizing, offshoring, automating economy is about following your passion, argues this exuberant and detailed primer on newfangled entrepreneurship. Davidson, a New Yorker economics writer and cofounder of NPR’s Planet Money podcast, warns readers to abandon jobs and businesses that can be automated or outcompeted by low-cost Asian firms. Instead, he contends, Americans should cultivate unique abilities and interests into specialty products and services for small markets accessed with the internet and cheap global transport. He illustrates his argument with case studies, including a lesbian couple who design menswear for women, an Amish factory producing horse-drawn farm equipment, and a pencil manufacturer that charges “bafflingly expensive” prices for #2s. Davidson’s business advice—shun commodity price-competition; find sheltered, high-margin niche markets—isn’t new, but his anecdotes are captivating, with shrewd lessons on management, marketing, and strategy. Firing bad customers, he notes, is as important as finding new ones. His case for mass entrepreneurship as a cure-all for economic discontents is less convincing, as it involves imponderables (“knowing yourself is crucial”), risks, and sharp edges (“price conversations” need to be “filled with some degree of tension and awkwardness”). Nevertheless, readers with a start-up yen will find useful and inspiring insights here.
Starred review from November 1, 2019 Financial journalist Davidson explores the new economy of pursuing one's dreams instead of plodding through a thankless career. Do what you love, and the money will follow. Davidson, a New Yorker staff writer and creator of NPR's Planet Money podcast, takes that idea and runs with it, his book predicated on the thrilling idea that a new economy is right around the corner, one in which "our work lives and our deepest passions can merge, happily, in ways that make us better off financially and personally." Think of a place like a certain well-known fast-food chain, one that makes it "immediately clear that you are not in a place of joy," a place where workers are replaceable and know it. Then contrast that with someone with a rare skill set, someone who, as with one of his examples, took training as a naval aviator and retail consultant and turned that into a delicious, much-sought-after candy bar, successful even though the candy giants had a lock on the distribution chain. Another example is a woman who grew up around the people who, with callused hands and dirty boots, did the hard work of harvesting grapes, and she converted her in-depth knowledge into a marketing business positioning wines before discerning audiences of drinkers. There's a new paradigm at work here, one that defies the old laws of supply and demand and that instead posits that price, for instance, is one of those things that a customer understands is a token of "the benefits they hope to receive: benefits based on very specialized knowledge." Technology and interlocked global markets bring this specialized knowledge to the world in ways that could only have been dreamed of in the past. Davidson's case studies are excellent, but the heart of the book is a set of rules worthy of committing to memory--e.g., "Pursue intimacy at scale"; "Know what business you're in, and it's probably not what you think." Fine inspiration for entrepreneurs that should be required reading in any business school curriculum.
COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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