Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Save yourself 25 bucks and find Stewart's original article debunking management theory. It was published in 2006--Atlantic, I think--and is online. He gives it away in the opening of the book in the 80-20 rule applied to books like this. No doubt we need critics like Stewart, but the extended tale of his litigation with his firm and not-so-valiant quest to get every penny he could, then his gloat over every penny he got, suggests that he's just another opportunist. For years Stewart by his own admission ripped off his clients by providing them with a "service" they didn't need. He seems to take pride in his own lack of principle--that he knew he was simply a parasite while other, perhaps younger, colleagues actually believed they were doing some good. (If you actually get to the later chapters, you'll see that he quits the consulting life not because of any anguish over being a con man but because he realizes the lifestyle has given him a paunch!) I've looked at Stewart's history of philosophy, so I know he has read Plato, but I don't think he took anything Socrates said to heart. He lived the life of the sophist, gutting the treasuries of as many companies as he could, cashed out, became a philosopher and critic of the profession that made him wealthy. I'm sure there's some more technical term for this within moral philosophy, but amongst hoi polloi it's called "having your cake and eating it too."