The Great American Art of Failure
From Our Bankruptcy Law to Our Jazz Music, We’re Willing to Take Big Risks to Become Big Successes
I want to argue that Americans are risk-takers, Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character, told the crowd at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. But some days, “I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and I think we’ve become a nation of worry-warts” who dress our kids in kneepads and helmets. Hitt was moderating a wide-ranging discussion—that covered entrepreneurship and jazz music, parenting and travel—on whether risk-taking is an essentially American trait. Turning to Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist and …
