Mike Walsh has spent more than 30 years in the information systems business. By all measures, he has been a success: he has important management responsibilities, high income, publications, teaching accomplishments, and consultant status to his credit. This book hands down some of this experience to current managers. It is Walsh’s view of how a manager should act in order to produce working products. When you read this book, however, you realize that, first, Walsh worked in such an oppressive corporate environment that he has become a bitter cynic and, second, his views are those of a second-level manager stuck in the 1970s or early 1980s. The result is that the book is primarily a diatribe against senior management, with precious little positive guidance for young managers. Several case studies emphasize how project managers succeeded by evading or thwarting senior managers’ goals. Then, having succeeded, they were fired. I do not doubt the validity of these cases, but I do not like the lessons Walsh draws from them, namely, that you get around problems by isolating your project and, when necessary, by subverting the actions of your associates and superiors. The strongest theme in the book is that everyone is viciously self-interested and a manager must place self-advancement above corporate goals. That may have been true where Walsh worked. Maybe that is real life nowadays; I hope not. I certainly would not want to encourage that behavior by teaching it to young managers. Walsh’s book is an interesting, frightening case history, but I would not recommend it as a teaching vehicle.