Six years ago Harvard professor Ezra

E Vogel first awakened the world to the

scope of Japan s success in" his land-

mark book Japan as Number One.

Now, in Comeback, Vogel breaks new

ground by spelling out what America

lunst do to make our economy once

again nutnher one.

Going well beyond the fixed and by

now tired notion that Japanese

achievement is due to ethnic or cul-

tural traits, management techniques

and submissive attitudes toward

authority, Vogel shows how the goveru-

meat and business leaders achieved

broad cooperation in developing

national strategies. Comeback offers

case studies which detail these

achicvcmcnts and others in America

that parallel the Japanese stories of

cooperation aud have resulted in the

same kinds of significant successes.

Vogel looks at the sensible manage-

ment of the declining Japanese coal-

mining industry and the Japanese

handling of shipbuilding alongside our

NASA moon voyagcs aud the pio-

neering regional plan for an economic

and business center in the North

Carolina Research Triangle.The

American success stories are biparti-

san programs which make clear the

crucial need for business, government

and labor coordination if the United

States is to respond adequately to the

economic challenges that come from

abroad and reestablish its pre-

eminence. America has its own style of

bipartisan cooperation and strategy.

What it now needs is a focus on inter-

national coinpetitiveness.

Comeback describes a sensible.

flexible and dynainic course that we can take to sueeeed--a course between

an absolute frcc market and rigid statc

control.The strategics rcqui rc a lean

government that works cooperativcly

with the privatc sector to respond

quickly and flexibly to challenges in

world competition. Vogel dcmystifies

the source of Japanese success and

provides a framework for achieving

long-term economic leadcrship by

thinking ahead.