Books, Arts & Manners: Gaga Gurus

The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (Times, 369 pp., $25)

WITCH doctors! It’s an engaging title, promising bile, sarcasm, and maybe, just perhaps, a sneer or two. After all, this is a book about management gurus, those experts whose ever-changing theories fill bookstores and empty factories. Well paid and annoying, they scream out for a little abuse. In this book, they don’t get it. As the authors note, somewhat smugly (they do write for The Economist), “it would have been much easier (and often far more pleasurable) to have trashed the industry.” But they reject the hatchet in favor of a “scalpel job.”

About the Author

Andrew Stuttaford

Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review's Capital Matters.

Featured Tags

The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (Times, 369 pp., $25)

WITCH doctors! It’s an engaging title, promising bile, sarcasm, and maybe, just perhaps, a sneer or two. After all, this is a book about management gurus, those experts whose ever-changing theories fill bookstores and empty factories. Well paid and annoying, they scream out for a little abuse. In this book, they don’t get it. As the authors note, somewhat smugly (they do write for The Economist), “it would have been much easier (and often far more pleasurable) to have trashed the industry.” But they reject the hatchet in favor of a “scalpel job.”