KIRKUS REVIEW
When Harvard Business School decides to launch its next fund-raising campaign, it need look no further for promotional material than Professor Ewing's name-dropping exercise in self-congratulation. A member of the HBS faculty for 39 years and a sometime managing editor of the Harvard Business Review, Ewing (""Do It My Way Or You're Fired,"" 1983, etc.) offers a guided tour of the prestigious institution that has produced a wealth of America's best and brightest captains of industry. In frankly elitist fashion, he reviews the courses students can and must take (in decision-making, entrepreneurial management, finance, marketing, operations, venture capital, etc.) during their two years on campus. With frequent stops along the way for testimonials from alumni, Ewing pays particular attention to the vaunted case method of instruction designed not only to nurture diagnostic and prescriptive skills but also to make participants appreciate that many if not most problems have no single best solution. Covered as well are admission policies, bell-curve grading, corporate recruitment of graduates, the downside risks of adding ethics to the curriculum, the employment of HBS professors as consultants, obstacles to achieving tenure, and allied subjects. In his somewhat defensive envoi, Ewing (who scarcely mentions other B-schools) concludes that the US needs Harvard to mold world-class executives capable of keeping the nation competitive in an increasingly global economy. Clearly so, but there's really no telling how this consequential process works from Ewing's slick, glorified syllabus.