The Art of Business: In the Footsteps of Giants.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: BookShelf - Brief Article - Book Review

The Art of Business: In the Footsteps of Giants. By Raymond T. Yeh with Stephanie H. Yeh. Zero Time Publishing, 279 pages. $19.95

Is there really value to a book that proclaims, as this does in the preface, to synthesize "the wisdom of the East with the knowledge of the West to articulate insights that show the way for experiencing wholeness and for nurturing the gift of leadership in our daily engagements?"

Indeed, there is. The Art of Business draws in part from the ancient, storied Chinese text, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but the emphasis is hardly on corporate strife. Yeh, an author, consultant and senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, sees harmonious and life-affirming values in great companies; in fact, he strongly believes that top companies have a "soul"--which he says Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and Arthur Andersen did not--and build on the foundations of "giants," the leaders who established their core values.

Loosely organized--there is no sequence or flow to the book, and Yeh himself urges readers to just "pick a story and dive in"--the book offers very focused histories of a wide spectrum of companies, including...