A Harvard Education

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Here's a good business idea: crib the title of a best-seller (What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School) and call your book What they Really Teach You at Harvard Business School. Fill it with synopses of HBS courses. Maybe the authors (Class of '83) learned something at the school after all. But did they learn to write there too?The book effervesces with such exciting sentences as "A brief summary of how to begin projecting each line of the pro forma balance sheet is outlined below." For this we should fork over 10 bucks?

The book's only redeeming social value is its occasional glimpse of real life at HBS. Take the time coauthor Fran Kelly broke his leg in an intramural soccer game. As he lay painfully waiting for an ambulance, a player from the other team, visibly upset, said, "We've gotta move this guy. I don't have time to replay this game another day." Later he yelled at Kelly, "OK, fella, if you're not going to move, your team has to forfeit the game and I want you to know it."

HBS, the authors observe, "is not known for its warmth."