The Third Century: America's Renaissance in the Asian Era.

• Author: Peters, Thomas J.

The Third Century: America's Renaissance in the Asian Era.

Bored by Lee Iacocca's latest round of Japan-bashing? Tired of Allan Bloom's efforts to get you to read the classics and take a morning pledge of allegiance to Europe? Had enough of Paul Kennedy's theories of inexorable historic decline? Fed up with Robert Reich's and George Gilder's attacks on big business--albeit from diametrically opposite perspectives? Confused by the macroeconomists' indecision about whether Reaganomics was something new (that either worked or didn't), or just Keynesian deficit spending in disguise?

If you answer "yes" to some or all of these questions, I heartily recommend Joel Kotkin and Yoriko Kishimoto's The Third Century. Kotkin and Kishimoto do not carry the academic credentials of Kennedy or Bloom; nor do they have the reknown of Iacocca. But Kotkin, Inc.'s West Coast editor, and Kishimoto, a management consultant, have written an original and sweeping treatise on American economic and social alternatives.

Their thesis is startlingly optimistic: the American economy cannot only catch up with its competitors, it can overtake them. According to the authors, Europe is stuck with its stodgy system of special subsidies and slack unions while Japan is awash in xenophobia and short on risk takers. A new American age could be dawning if we create firms that combine the best entreprenuerial behavior (and not Fortune 500 behavior) with Asian approaches to cooperation in the workplace.

Entrepreneurial behavior means the creativity, flexibility, and daring that are the essence of the American character at its best. To Kotkin and Kishimoto it means as well the humanity that is also a part of that character but is too often ignored by conservatives like George Gilder.

Kotkin has previously authored numerous analyses of midsize and smaller American manufacturing firms. His original research demonstrates that manufacturing is on the mend in this country, thanks mainly to vast new outpourings by the smaller firms--high-tech and low. The Third Century carefully documents the surge of smaller-scale manufacturing in the L.A. Basin, which is now the manufacturing center of the U.S.; the role of midsize and smaller firms in revitalizing even our oldest industries (e.g., steel, other metals, and forest products); and the central role played by the newer concerns in the struggle for global high-tech prominence. Compaq, which took on IBM at the zenith of that firm's dominance of...