Lessons from the Top.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Review

Lessons from the Top. By Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin. Currency/ Doubleday, 432 pages. $15.95.

It's hard to fault the premise of this book: Identify 50 of the foremost chief executives in the U.S. and profile them and their philosophies, using first-person interviews to amplify their thinking. There's a wealth of ideas and strategies to learn from, especially from the individual CEO's perspective of what he or she did to drive the company's performance.

Of course, choosing the "top 50" is a difficult exercise. The authors, a pair of prominent executive recruiters, say they "tried to make the list as authoritative, comprehensive and objective as humanly possible," A careful screening technique -- including criteria like total return to shareholders and cash flow growth -- was used to help select the elite group. Some obvious...