Journey's Reward

How knowledge flows in and out of innovative minds ripples through Journeys Reward a fast-paced captivating historical account of twentieth century entrepreneurship spanning the Texas-Mexico borderlands. The book by veteran business writer and entrepreneur Doug Perkinsdetails the lives of self-taught photographer and botanist Robert Runyon and the Southwests first aviator Prentice Alexander Newman. Each man arrived in Texas lower Rio Grande Valley in early 1909. During the next six decades each man took his turn generating compelling innovations in science and technology even while each experienced personal legal political and wartime crises. The violence of the Mexican Revolution and the Texas bandit wars especially during Newman and Runyons single brief collaboration and the sorrow of personal losses accentuated both mens entrepreneurship. At times Runyon also had to manage the complications of South Texas political drama while Newman balanced the building of Americas first monoplane with a court fight for his life. Through it all the men created and transferred important new knowledge that helped pace early aviation and photography technology brought awareness to needed protection for indigenous subtropical flora and demonstrated that knowledge transfer drives productivity and economic growth in the borderlands.Featuring main characters with whom every reader can relate Journeys Reward mirrors the polymathic creativity chronicled in Walter Isaacsons Leonardo Da Vinci and the engineering ingenuity displayed in David McCulloughs The Wright Brothers. The book features more than forty historic photographs the majority of which are images taken by Runyon during his photography career between 1909 and 1926. That combination of actual events supported by illustrations of the eras events makes Journeys Reward a spellbinding examination of the knowledge creation process through the careers of two twentieth century men who expertly navigated the entrepreneurial path of risk and reward.