The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Introduction

In this book I invite you to take inspiration from a renegade minister, a handyman turned political activist and naturalist, and an innovative educator and early feminist voice, though they may seem at first an odd collection of mentors to guide today's entrepreneur.

Each of these sources of inspiration produced their primary body of literary work in the mid-1800s, during a time that many cite as America's first period of a truly spirited counterculture.

I'm speaking of the period often referred to as American transcendentalism, a brief time that experienced its heyday just prior to the American Civil War and left a lasting impact on American literature, religion, philosophy, art, political activism, social thought, and as I propose in this work, a goldmine for today's enlightened entrepreneur.

It doesn't matter what you call this point of view or even what you call yourself. You can possess the spirit of self-reliance and independence no matter your profession or job title. Being an entrepreneur is as much about who you choose to be as what you choose to do for a living.

In addition to blossoming independent thinking, this was a period of unparalleled awakening in American literature, when perennial classics such as The Scarlet Letter, Leaves of Grass, Moby Dick, Little Women, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Self-Reliance, Walden, and Civil Disobedience, along with a great deal of the catalog of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Edgar Allan Poe, sprang forth.

This was a period ...