Foreword by Bill McKibben
Introduction: From Wal-Mart to Small-Mart
THE GATHERING GALE
Wreckonomics
The LOIS Alternative
Amazing Shrinking Machines
THE SMALL-MART PATRIOTS
Consumers
Investors
Entrepreneurs
Policymakers
Community Builders
Globalizers
Appendix A. The Fall and Rise of Small-Scale Competitiveness
Appendix B. The Scale of Existing Business by Payroll
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
Index
Michael Shuman, an attorney, economist, and writer, is Vice
President for Enterprise Development for the Training & Development
Corporation (TDC) of Bucksport, Maine. Since publication of his
previous book, Going Local- Creating Self-Reliant Communities in
the Global Age (Routledge, 2000), he has been considered one of the
nation's fore- most experts on locally owned business.
After growing up in the suburbs in Long Island and St. Louis,
Shuman entered Stanford University, where he received a bachelors'
degree with distinction in international relations and economics in
1979 and a law degree in 1982. In 1980 he won First Prize in the
Rabinowitch Essay Competition of the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists on "How to Prevent Nuclear War."
This is a badly needed book.
—BILL MCKIBBEN, author of The End of Nature
The Small-Mart Revolution reveals why supporting small business
makes good economic sense and how they offer the only real long-
term solution for the health of our neighborhoods and our nation.
It will touch your heart, while showing you how to better mind your
wallet.
—DR. NANCY SNYDERMAN, Vice President for Consumer Education,
Johnson & Johnson, and Associate Professor of Head and Neck
Surgery, University of Pennsylvania
There are precious few good alternatives to the “Wal-Martization”
of our communities. The Small-Mart Revolution not only provides an
alternative analysis, it tells us how we can make it happen.
—ROBERT GREENWALD, director of the documentary “Wal-Mart: The High
Cost of Low Price”
The Small-Mart Revolution is an essential resource for every local
business owner, government official, and public interest citizen
advocate. Michael Shuman makes a convincing case that the future
belongs to the small and local. This is an authoritative,
practical, and highly readable handbook on rebuilding local
economies as
an alternative to corporate-led economic globalization by the
leading guru of local economic development.
—DAVID C. KORTEN, author of When Corporations Rule the World and
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
The Small-Mart Revolution provides the most important blueprint for
economic development I’ve ever seen. It shows how communities can
prosper by putting local constituents and businesses first. The
book should be required reading for local elected officials and
civil servants across America.
—LARRY AGRAN, Mayor of Irvine, California (2000–2004)
Some of us have embraced globalization without worrying overmuch
about the consequences. Others of us are fighting pointless battles
against progress, technology, and capitalism. Here, Michael Shuman
presents a badly needed Third Way. He says that by strengthening
our local businesses and communities we’ll be creating a better
capitalism and a better world. And he backs it up with logic,
examples, statistics, and passion! This is the kind of book that
could launch a whole new social-political movement.
—MARK SATIN, author of Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now
Michael Shuman has done it again. He shows the power of grassroots
economics—not as mere theory about a future world— but as real
people, today, creating an equitable economy from the grassroots
up. This book will revolutionize your thinking about “development.”
Do yourself and all of us a favor by reading it and then acting on
it.
—KEVIN DANAHER, Co-Director, Global Exchange
The world is about to become a larger place again. Globalism is
toast. Caught up in raptures of credit-fueled discount shopping,
few Americans realize how profoundly our society is about to
change. We are sleepwalking into a permanent global energy crisis
that will compel us to live much more locally than we have for
generations. We face a desperate need to reconstruct local networks
of economic relations—and we should have begun this great task
yesterday. This is an invaluable guide to how we might accomplish
this.
—JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER, author of The Long Emergency
As global markets explode, Michael Shuman offers a compelling
alternative for growth towards a healthier civil society. Anyone
interested in the consequences of globalization dominated by
multinationals should read this book.
—MICHELE BARRY, Professor of Medicine and Global Health, Yale
University
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