THE BUCK SMELLERS: The Answer to the Profit Crisis in American Business

One sniff is enough. But reviewers are obliged to inhale deeply, even when the scent gets more rotten foul with the turn of each page. Butler, head of E. A. Butler Associates, Inc. (""with management consulting offices in twelve American cities"") believes that the buck smeller -- ""my earthy name for the man with a gutty instinct for profits"" -- is getting short shrift in the corporate suites, either because he's despised as a pushy SOB or his nonpareil schnozzle goes unpicked. Butler's aim is to elucidate the buck smeller's virtues and hopefully convert ""ordinary"" executives to the cause: ""Profits aren't messy details that gentlemen don't have to worry about. They're the fuel, the life blood of this whole system."" Successful buck smellers like H. Ross Perot, Robert Abplanalp, and Lee Iacocca -- all hard-driving, risk-taking, shekel-minded men -- are fawned over, unaggressive MBA-types frowned upon, and free enterprise malarkey dispensed by the gross. . . ""any generalization that has more than 50 percent accuracy is worth making."" So we can say, with clear critical conscience, this book smells.