The puritan gift

the long version

"The Puritan Gift traces the origins and characteristics of an American managerial culture which, over the course of three centuries, turned a handful of small colonies into the greatest economic and political power on earth. It argues that the energy, social mobility, competitiveness and capacity for innovation, all of which lie at the heart of that culture, have their origins in the discipline and ethos of America's first wave of European immigrants: the Puritans. Drawing lessons from their own extensive experience, the authors warm that as America distances itself from the core values which underlay its commercial and economic success during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it puts its own future prosperity and security at risk."--BOOK JACKET.