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Charles Handy has written one of those genuine, life-affirming books that is so rare these days. A combination of sweetness and grit, aspiration and reality, it details the exceptional careers of 29 misfits of society who have "created something significant out of nothing or turned the equivalent of base metal into a kind of gold," which was the old alchemists’ dream. In The New Alchemists, Handy writes of William Atkinson, who arrived as an immigrant Jamaican boy to England in 1957. Because bureaucrats couldn’t understand his mother’s English, he was put in a class with children two years older than he was. He subsequently twice failed his high-school final exam. But an inspirational teacher gave him the conviction to become a teacher himself. Today, he runs the Phoenix School, which had been in horrible shape but is now a rapidly improving educational facility that caters to London’s many immigrants. Dee Dawson, while being raised in a working-class home, was told not to bother with higher education. Somehow, while bringing up five children, she earned a master’s in business from London Business School and, at age 42, became a physician. At this point, her husband’s successful computer business went bust because of what Handy reports was chicanery by his colleagues. Pressed for money and seeing a need, Dawson launched Rhodes Farm, England’s first anorexia treatment facility for young people. Nine years later, it is a roaring clinical and financial success, and Dawson is looking around for a new challenge. Julia Middleton was told she would never succeed. Of a rebellious spirit, she gained her intellectual confidence in a French lycee, where she unexpectedly found herself at the top of her class, and eventually studied at London School of Economics. She created Head Start, a program providing high school dropouts with training and advice from prospective employers. Later, while raising five children, she founded Common Purpose, an organization that massages the minds of educators, politicians, and industrialists to help them wake up to the power of technology. Today, Common Purpose operates in more than 40 cities in the United Kingdom, as well as in Ireland, Sweden, Germany, and Australia. The list goes on: Trevor Baylis, the inventor of a cheap wind-up radio, now made by disabled people in Cape Town, South Africa. His purpose was to provide Africans with affordable access to information about AIDS. Or, Richard Branson, a dyslexic who describes himself as "pretty hopeless" in the classroom. Today, Branson runs an empire of 40 companies, including Virgin Airlines, that has annual revenue of £2 billion. None of these people had any reason to succeed. Indeed, accounts of their childhood sometimes read like something out of Charles Dickens. Writing of Andy Law, head of London’s fabled St. Luke’s advertising agency, Handy writes: "Andy was brought up in a children’s home so antiquated that it was still called a home for Waifs and Strays." Yet, succeed they did, because of a few qualities they share. This group of 29 Londoners is restless, with low boredom thresholds and with great impatience to contribute to the betterment of society. All have a drive, optimism, and just-do-it attitude that somehow avoided being dulled by England’s educational system. Knowing many of them, as I do, I can tell you that they also are delightful human beings. The book is done in an entertaining, semi-interview style. The author—himself a success story, who often is likened to American management guru Peter Drucker—teases out the essence of each alchemist. The book also rewards the reader with fine, candid photographs taken by Handy’s wife, Elizabeth. The collage of photos of each subject provides good context for these people, by showing them at work. The anecdotal book may feel a bit lightweight, and the telling of the stories may seem understated to the American reader, but the book has a thought-provoking core. It is a story of role models for future generations, and an indication of why the U.K. economy today is so successful. On a deeper level, it is an instructional guide to the human spirit and the power of second and third and fourth chances. As Handy summarizes, "Today, more than ever, we need more such alchemists in society, at all levels and in all sectors. They sow the seeds of the future. Innovation and creativity, enterprise and entrepreneurship are the vogue words for the new millennium. But these brave words need special people to deliver them.
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