Praise the Lord and pass the balance sheet

Today's business books combine war, spirituality and capitalism in an unholy trinity of feel-good blood 'n' guts money-grubbing.

By Kevin Leahy

May 20, 2002 | I work at a major chain bookstore, one of those faux Ivy League library numbers with gorgeous wood trim and floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with 50 or so of the top ten bestsellers churned out by Patterson, Grisham and Clancy, and maybe one copy of everything else. In the front of the store stand the bestseller racks steeped with this week's populist fare: "The Prayer of Jabez," "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and (for the time being) the latest Oprah title.

One of the things I like best about working there is that we get all types dropping in. Ours is a diverse customer base: soccer moms, elderly black church ladies, nuclear families, surly teenagers. First-year business students, bull-necked and noosed in power ties, demanding to know where to find "The Art of War" after their latest viewing of "Wall Street." Middle-aged hippies with braids and untamed beards browsing the alternative-health section. Yesterday I actually spotted one sporting a vintage Make Love, Not War T-shirt. But the one thing that this smorgasbord of humanity has in common is that they all want the newest books on war and finance.

Sept. 11 may have sparked a renaissance in learning about Islam and the Middle East, but the economic downturn has inspired an even greater rash of financial book buying at my place of employment. This war on terrorism, fought with a fever-pitch moral righteousness against "evildoers" and the like, has much in common with modern business strategy as espoused by today's bestsellers, which often blend scorched-earth war rhetoric with financial advice. Books like "Guerrilla Marketing" and "Warrior's Wisdom: The Combat Guide to Corporate Life" line the shelves and top the lists, each with its own brand of pseudo-philosophizing and fuzzy-headed tough-talk pronouncements.

The first and most tempting reaction to this literary conflation of war and business is to dismiss the whole scene as flabby white guys in suits vicariously playing soldier. The philosophical assumptions that gird the undercarriage of the "business is war" mentality are, however, more troubling.

This current preoccupation with money and worldly success is nothing new; Dale Carnegie's bestseller "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is still in print and selling well after 65 years. "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is one of the fastest-selling financial books of recent years, spawning several sequels like "Rich Dad's Guide to Investing" and the curiously named "Rich Kid, Smart Kid." Suze Orman's "The Courage to Be Rich" is another.

But if being rich takes courage and the rich are inherently smart, is not the converse implied? Are the poor, then, necessarily dumb and cowardly? As Kurt Vonnegut once remarked, in our culture one of the cruelest things anyone can say to anyone else is, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" This country has a long history of confusing wealth with intelligence, although the signs of sputtering intellectual horsepower coming from the White House ought to put that particular delusion to rest soon enough.

So if the money masters are courageous, smart, influential men with lots of friends, would it not stand to reason that they are also warrior-gods? There is in fact a version of "The Art of War" written specifically for management. This mentality has given rise to books like "The Genius of Robert E. Lee," which offers business advice to "the outgunned and outnumbered." Never mind that Lee was on the losing side of a hideous war fighting for the right to preserve an evil institution. Never mind that while making money is a necessity, most people would prefer to do so without raining the horrors of war down on their competitors.

These books are finding an audience. Perhaps there is a certain perverse glee in the hearts of middle managers who feel stifled by the conformist restrictions of corporate etiquette. Perhaps this business bloodlust is just the way their individuality expresses itself. There is, after all, "a time in every man's life when he gets the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats," to quote H.L. Mencken.

Next page: "God told me to lay off 10,000 people!"