For purposes of ready reference, this book can be classed with those self-help manuals that offer advice on how to succeed in the business world and do it ethically. It consists of 25 chapters (many of which are taken from the author's "Office Politics" column in GQ ) devoted to such well-chosen topics as how to fire, how to handle an expense account, how to cope with leaks and rumors, how to work for a bastard, and so on. Edwards does not say a great deal that others have not said before him, but one does not need to be original to be helpful--and helpful he is. His advice is likely to be listened to because it confines the ideal to the limits of the practical. Unlike other recent books on the same topic--O.C. Ferrell and Gareth Gardiner's In Pursuit of Ethics ( LJ 5/1/91) and Charles E. Watson's Managing with Integrity ( LJ 6/1/91)--there is no obvious unity of design in the collection; variety is the keynote.
Twenty-five hilarious but sage essays (based on Edwards's ''Office Politics'' column in GQ), laying out an ethical ''battle plan'' to both ascend and transcend today's glazed corporate pyramid. In this razor-sharp satire of contemporary American business- -where executives wield cellular phones (''that Excalibur of overweening ambition'') but not one of them is responsible for the savings-and-loan disaster--Edwards offers sound, workable advice for handling meetings, memos, perks, rumors, even the trauma of getting fired (today less a ''brutal shock'' than a ''lethal injection''). He also identifies the familiar cast of irritants-- the infighters, the boss's wife, the ''Pol Pot/Executive VP,'' and the ''toadies'' (like Polonius, who, Edwards contends, would today ''have ended up with a corner office and seven figures instead of a rapier through the gullet''). Forget the ''Take No Prisoners Memo'' (''better shred than dead''), and beware expense accounts (Mephistopheles's ''favorite route into the workplace'') as well as ''Sex Officio,'' for which the author offers nine ''cautions.'' Even post-Clarence Thomas hearings, Edwards's humor lets him get away with pride at possessing the ''secretarial equivalent of an Alpha-Romeo'' and other retrogressive lapses. (''I, for one,'' he writes, ''would be deeply disappointed to see unchecked passion at the copy machine, or to stumble upon Farrah D., executive VP, casting a sexually harassing glance at Scott B., her hard-working secretary.'') Finally, what Edwards demands is accountability, ambition, and excellence. ''Unless we can turn jobs back into callings,'' he writes, ''whether or not those jobs entail collecting garbage, running a nuclear power facility, producing television or transplanting kidneys, the next century is going to be a fine mess.'' Read this for solace and strategy--particularly if you've been handed a life sentence in corporate America. Keep it in your desk, consider sending it anonymously to your boss or George Bush. Tell the back-stabbing drones who ask that it's an essential weapon for recouping our losses to the Japanese--because it is.
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