It's wonderfully useful stuff -- and you don't have to be a revolutionary to put it to work. So come down from the hills, retire your fatigues, and use this book as a guide to competition in the new economy.

Who Wants to Punch a Revolutionary?

Thomas Frank is as fascinated with the "business revolution" as Gary Hamel is -- but for totally different reasons. Frank may be one of the world's most devoted students of business gurus. George Gilder, Tom Peters, Peter Senge -- he's read them all, probed them for every foible, and put their ideas through his ideological blender. He is also, it should be noted, a devoted student of Fast Company. He seems to take our articles as seriously as our readers do -- while reaching different conclusions about their intent and value. (Here's his take on one of our most influential cover stories: "It was a terrifying glimpse of the coming total-corporate state, like Dress for Success rewritten by Chairman Mao.")

So what does Frank make of the new business ideology in which he immerses himself? Well, it's easy to figure out what he's against. He's against right-wing ideologues who portray the NASDAQ stock-market average as a barometer of social well-being. He's against dotcom millionaires who confuse their personal wealth with evidence of superior moral worth. He's against companies that appropriate the symbols of political reform to pretend that they exist not to turn a profit, but to change the world.

My favorite example along these lines: Frank's hilariously scathing deconstruction of E*Trade's 1999 annual report, which "used photos of black passengers sitting in the back of a bus" to establish its change-the-world credentials. Rosa Parks wouldn't sit still for racism, the images imply, so why should investors sit still for outrageous fees? According to Frank, "The company's CEO concluded this exercise in pseudo-radical chest-thumping with this funky rallying cry: 'Bodacious! The revolution continues.' "

Bodacious, indeed. How can any reader with even a slightly open mind not enjoy this skewering of such a deserving target? But after a while, even a sympathetic reader begins to wonder, What is Thomas Frank for, exactly? Would he prefer that we return to the 1950s, when we could look forward to 30-year careers with the same giant company? Is he so unpersuaded that there's something different about the generation of companies formed over the last decade that he's prepared to lump Amazon.com, General Motors, Philip Morris, and Yahoo! into the same category -- business with a capital "B" -- and assign all of their leaders the same values, motives, and goals?

It looks to me like his answer to those questions is yes -- and that points to the weakness of Frank's worldview. For all of his cutting-edge cultural observations, Frank comes off as an economic dinosaur. He just cannot fathom the idea that people can find value in what they do at the office, that they can identify personally with their jobs, that work can be fun, challenging, even meaningful -- as opposed to a form of punishment that you endure in order to put food on the table and put your kids through college. He can't relate to the most basic promise of this new era: that you can do important things in the world without having to be part of a vast enterprise.

There's a fine line between the promise of the new economy and the ideological hyperventilation that goes along with it. However, the silly exuberance that Frank so ably chronicles does not obliterate a more profound reality: There is something different, something more humane, about business in the 21st century. If Frank would spend less time poking fun at the theorists, and spend more time with the doers, he might see that new reality for himself. He might even like what he sees.

Sidebar: FC Recommends

Big Idea: Surfing the Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business, by Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann, and Linda Gioja (Crown Business, $26.95). What does the decline of Sears have in common with forest fires? This book answers that and other questions.

Best Practice: The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing, by Emanuel Rosen (Currency Doubleday, $24.95). In an era of too much of everything, the best marketing is word-of-mouth marketing.

Sleeper: Labor Day, by Floyd Kemske (Catbird Press, $22). The fourth in a series of "corporate nightmares." Be afraid, be very afraid.

Keeper: The Message of the Markets: How Financial Markets Foretell the Future - and How You Can Profit From Their Guidance, by Ron Insana (HarperBusiness, $25). Imagine -- a smart business book by a TV personality! Insana's stock keeps rising.

Sidebar: Cheat Sheet