To research this book, I traveled across the country with Janetand our son Ben, who at four years of age, enjoyed the trip im-mensely. We started by driving to Maine, where we were amazedby the large number of self-employed people we met. I attributedthis to the Yankee tradition of independence, evident throughoutNew England, but more extreme the farther east you go. But aswe progressed in our travels, visiting "independent" people inVirginia, Iowa, New Mexico, and California, I realized that NewEnglancl may have the tradition, but the phenomenon of self-em-ployment is everywhere. Opening our eyes, asking around, we dis-covered a powerful web of people who, mostly in the last five or sixyears, have recognized that happiness and security are often illu-sions when you work for someone else at the same job day afterday. As we traveled, I read Working, by Studs Terkel. I contrastedthe realities of the 40-hour week his book so thoroughly describeswith the seemingly more-flexible lives of the people we were visit-ing. Within weeks of starting our travels, I realized how wastefulmy practice was of writing in advance to make appointments. Ilearned, instead, that driving through town and phoning from thegas station at lunchtime ("We're just passing through and Iwondered if we could stop by sometime this afternoon to see you inaction . . . ?") was the best way to get a candid view of thesesmall businesses. "Come anytime! My time is my own!" weretypical replies. And yet, we learned, such time is dearly bought. I first employed this drop-in technique on John Cole, editor ofMaine Times, a forthright little newspaper published in Topsham,Maine, that pays close and sympathetic attention to the activities ofpeople who have abandoned----or never entered~-"the greatAmerican work force." While we talked, Cole introduced me to theterm "Post-Industrial Activity," which informed the researching ofand thus, I hope, describes, the principal thrust of this book. Driving from Topsham, we visited first Joan and Rob LeeJohnston, whose seed business had been featured in a recentMaine Times issue, then farther east to Harborside, where Eliotand Sue Coleman are working to expand the one-acre, intensiveorganic garden they've hacked out of a heavily wooded piece of