America the Principled

August 27, 2007
Harvard Business School professor Kanter (Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
) offers a sweeping prescription for restoring American ideals in this scattered book. Her six-point agenda for American leaders and the public includes nurturing innovation, promoting a work-family balance, encouraging corporations that respect transparency and the social good, promoting leadership in the public sector and respect for government, engaging the rest of the world and restoring our sense of community. When the author supports her analysis with clear and substantial examples, such as an early description of an effort to promote “team-based,” “technology-enabled” education in a New Jersey middle school, she makes a compelling case. However, the book often moves from anecdote to generalization with thin supporting evidence—in a few short pages, Kanter decries the way the Internet can “undermine relationship skills” without fully elaborating her point or considering the potential community-building benefits of online interaction. The author draws persuasively on her immense experience, especially in chapters about work life and corporate management, but the book frequently reads like a pep talk for the like-minded.