These are two interesting, controversial, complementary books. The authors are of different generations. John Perkins is sixty (2005). He was a college student during the Vietnam War who came to oppose the war, then joined the Peace Corps to avoid the draft. Noreena Hertz is thirty-six. She is an academic/activist, a professor of political economy who was tear-gassed at the massive Global Justice protest in Genoa (2001) at which hundreds were beaten by the Italian police and one protestor killed.

Not so long ago I interviewed a computer engineer in her home. Surrounded with toys and a napping baby—the interview time had been chosen carefully—she talked about how she worked as an independent contractor for a large electronics company. Connected by high-speed broadband, two telephone lines, and a cell phone, she felt fully integrated into the work, exchanging electronic files with her colleagues and having telephone conversations with customers two continents and umpteen time zones away. She told me she often worked late after the baby was in bed and during the baby's afternoon nap before she went to pick her older child up from school. Despite these odd working times, however, she was convinced that none of the company's customers and only some of her work colleagues knew that she worked at home. She was very contented with the arrangement.

The moral foundation of capitalism holds that the wealth of a nation is enhanced (utilitarianism) by providing individuals with the freedom and liberty to do what comes natural, pursuing their own self-interests (egoism). When alignment between individual interests and general welfare is achieved, even if unintentionally achieved, minimum paternalistic governmental oversight and intervention is needed.

In the book's preface, McCloskey explains that it is the first of a planned four-volume set that asks us to make “a fresh start in our attitudes … toward how we earn a living.”1 She asks us to embrace unapologetically our capitalist society. We should neither scorn nor feel guilty about the relative luxury capitalism affords most of us since it is necessary to develop the full, virtuous life that the ancient Greeks, most notably Aristotle, advocated.

SHAWN L. BERMAN is an assistant professor of management policy at the School of Management, Santa Clara University. He received his Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of Washington. His three main research interests are corporate social performance, especially measurement issues; intra- and inter-organizational trust; and issues of corporate governance. His work has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Business & Society, as well as other outlets. E-mail: [email protected].