Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA

After six years as a White House speechwriter for Reagan and Bush, Robinson enrolled at Stanford Business School, wrestled for two years in perpetual exhaustion with often incomprehensible mathematical, organization and marketing concepts and, upon earning his MBA ``union card for yuppies,'' interviewed in the communications world of Robert Maxwell, Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch (who hired him for a brief stint). In the tradition of Scott Turow's One L for potential students who are curious about Harvard Law School, the author sets out with humor and perception to answer the question that no business school catalogue does: What is business school like? Then Robinson dismisses the value of an MBA degree in the economic downturn after the fat '80s; for him the degree did not pay off as a ``straight and easy road to riches.'' Robinson explains: ``Today I'm back to being what I was before I went to business school, a writer.'' BOMC and Fortune Book Club alternates. (May)