by Max Barry

I haven't been keeping up with my media consumption lately, so I'll be using the next few posts to do some catching up.

This book is a fun little satire of corporate culture and the rise of management “self-help” industry. As a manager myself, the book is fun to the extent that one doesn't take it too seriously; however, the satire is biting enough that it sometimes hits close to home. I don't want to give away the central conceit, but the moral is mundane enough to share: companies who stress productivity and efficiency and profitability at their employees' expense (no matter what the cold, technical data might support), will never be truly successful.

Sounds boring enough, but the story is carried along grandly by the abundant (black) humor and snappy prose. Max Barry knows how to make cynicism fun.