Why are some peo­ple com­pelled to take big risks on big ideas, attempt­ing to change a mar­ket or the world in ways that oth­ers find delu­sion­al? And why do they keep try­ing, again and again, often after repeat­ed fail­ures and at great per­son­al expense? Neil See­man is one of those peo­ple: an inter­net entre­pre­neur steeped in North Amer­i­can start-up cul­ture. Draw­ing on his own busi­ness expe­ri­ence and his father’s research into the brain’s pro­cess­ing of risk and reward, See­man explains the entre­pre­neur­ial mind­set — the world’s pri­ma­ry wealth cre­ation engine — is a form of addic­tion. The highs expe­ri­enced by indi­vid­u­als when they are solv­ing prob­lems or mak­ing break­throughs are enor­mous­ly gen­er­a­tive and excit­ing, and the lows, tor­ment­ing and debil­i­tat­ing, that they live on an unsus­tain­able ham­ster wheel of con­stant striv­ing and often wind up destroy­ing the very things that they helped cre­ate. With com­pas­sion and deep insight, he sug­gests ways in which the vital ener­gies of the entre­pre­neur­ial class can be direct­ed in a more con­struc­tive and sus­tain­able manner.