Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich discovers that, despite its reputation for a ruthless focus on the bottom line, corporate business is “shot through with magical thinking,” inspired and mesmerized by a burgeoning portfolio of New Age quackery and bunkum. Evangelicals refer to Jesus Christ as their “CEO” or personal investment advisor, while management writers cull from Lao-tzu, Buddha, Confucius, and Carl Jung. Counting out “seven habits” or “four competencies” or “sixty-seven principles of success,” business advice books can be as comically arcane as end-times prophecy, the oracles of
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