[A] richly reported indictment of the school as a leading reason that corporate America is disdained by much of the country...in example after example, Mr. McDonald sets out his thesis that money and influence have distorted both the school's curriculum and the worldview espoused by its professors.
Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times This is serious ... Read morehistory, broad in its sweep and meticulous in the detail.
Wall Street Journal Duff McDonald's The Golden Passport is the detailed story of Harvard Business School (HBS) that, willingly marinated in corporate money and influence, prepares each generation of modern corporate tycoons. HBS, while alert to shaping the latest management techniques, is largely indifferent to the ongoing corporate crime wave and other criminogenic behavior and externalities corrosive of fundamental civic values and economic equities. Readers can bury their noses in this prodigious tome and come away with a stench of affluent decadence.
Ralph Nader The Golden Passport is a tour-de-force about one of our nation's most important and enduring symbols of capitalism. Whether you aspire to attend Harvard Business School or you disdain it for its disproportionate influence on Wall Street and in the executive suites of our major corporations, McDonald's investigative-reporting masterpiece is a must read.
William D. Cohan, New York Times bestselling author of House of Cards The Golden Passport isn't the first (and won't be the last) time that pointed criticism has been aimed at the Harvard Business School, but it is certainly the most thorough to date. The story McDonald tells isn't a simplistic one. Rather, he argues that the analytical modus operandi of Harvard-trained MBAs has damaged not just particular companies, but the very fabric of society itself. It's a convincing and important call for change.
Bethany McLean, co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room Duff McDonald's Golden Passport is a magisterial history of Harvard Business School and much more. It provides a powerful lens into the intellectual underpinnings and pragmatic failures of American business and American capitalism writ large.
Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class Exploring how Harvard Business School became a ticket to the highest echelons of money, power, and influence, McDonald (The Firm) chronicles the school's history in an irreverent, cynical, and frequently funny expose of its pretensions...refreshingly substitutes skepticism for reverence, questioning the limits of business education and of capitalism in general.
Publishers Weekly A massively detailed history of Harvard Business School since its founding in 1908 and a searing critique of the school's impact on American capitalism...McDonald's deep research into the 100-plus years of HBS-the faculty members, the courses offered, many of the students-is undoubtedly impressive.
Kirkus Reviews McDonald's reporting highlights the school's influence, such as detailing how HBS helped the U.S. win WWII by marrying mathematics and statistics to war strategy, and also how HBS helped define and establish the foundations of managerial knowledge in the country and put American management at the forefront of global business.
Booklist In McDonald's hands this history of the Harvard Business School, its successes and failures, misdeeds and misapprehensions, becomes a window into the increasingly corrupted soul of mercantile America.
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