Inside the Harvard Business School

A 40-year Harvard Business School faculty member, Ewing here gives a comprehensive picture of the curriculum, teaching methods and psychological challenges that bestow on B School graduates each year ``the golden passport to management and power.'' Key to the school's globally recognized effectiveness, notes the author, is the ``case method,'' whereby students simulate management deliberations by contending with an actual business situation. Each semester students in a ``homeroom'' amphitheater grapple with the case they ``own.'' Successive course instructors ``in the pit'' guide (and eventually grade) student performance in marketing strategy, production and operations, contract negotiations, ``organizational behavior,'' etc. Interviews with alums holding top jobs worldwide, fast-track recruiting games and faculty politics are a tiny fraction of the subjects making this highly readable study of Harvard's ``economic warfare'' academy the next best thing to enrolling there. (Sept.)