With a focus on his role as Japan's proconsul following WWII, this collaboration from spouses Theodore Kinni (Future Focus
) and former Kemper Securities v-p Donna Kinni makes good use of MacArthur's military career to elucidate 52 chapter-based business principles. Military history buffs will note that the section on strategy downplays MacArthur's failure to properly organize the evacuation of the Philippines garrison to the Bataan peninsula, and that the discussion of his leadership looks past his mostly loyalty-based minions. But the leavened, level-headed lessons that the Kinnis draw from the career, presented in the kind of clear, even prose absent from so many inspirational business books, make any hagiographic impulses less problematic. When the Kinnis note that "MacArthur's expectations... acted as a performance bond," they are talking less about the man than about the power of taking a firm position of belief and trust when asking someone to do something or collaborating. The book is full of small anecdotes that lead to larger lessons and for which one need not clamp a pipe between one's teeth or hide one's gaze behind aviator sunglasses (Feb.)
