July 24, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives
by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek
“The path to a better life for growing numbers of people today is to apply the principles of entrepreneurship to life itself,” write Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek, founding partners of New Mountain Ventures, a leadership-development firm. “Rather than being driven by the opportunity to create an innovative enterprise, a life entrepreneur is driven by the chance to create a life of significance.”
The authors offer the stories of 55 charity, government, and business leaders who have worked to integrate their careers, morals, values, and home lives, and they provide a guidebook to help readers do the same.
The book’s subjects include a woman who founded a charter school for poor Boston students, a former professional basketball player who created several community groups in Sacramento, and a couple who started up a day care company and nonprofit group for homeless children.
Mr. Gergen and Mr. Vanourek emphasize public and community service as an integral part of their idea of life entrepreneurship, and argue that there is a trend toward combining for-profit and charity work.
“It is no longer enough to work for a paycheck; there is a growing belief that a good life requires work in pursuit of something meaningful and lasting,” they write, “especially in the face of the significant environmental, economic, political, and diplomatic challenges that rising generations have inherited.”
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103; (800) 956-7739; fax (317) 572-4002; http://www.josseybass.com; 256 pages; $24.95; ISBN 0-7879-8862-6.
