TOP DRAWER BOOK REVIEW
by
HL Carpenter
House of Lies
by Martin Kihn
ISBN 0-446-57656-5
273 pages; hardcover; $24.95
Warner Books, New York, 2005
If you’ve always believed consultants are less interested in helping your company than in helping themselves to your company’s money ... well, you’ll find those suspicions confirmed in House of Lies.
A consultant, says author Martin Kihn (a former consultant) is someone who borrows your watch in order to tell you the time, and then walks off with the watch.
House of Lies is meant to be humorous, and Mr. Kihn mostly succeeds (the acknowledgments section is every author’s dream). Unfortunately, like all rants, it runs overlong and grows tiresome. But the worst part comes when you put the book down. That’s when you realize how much this great con game costs in terms of money, morale and productivity. That’s also when the laughter stops completely and you wonder just how intelligent today’s so-called business leaders really are.
Think your company is in trouble? Before you give in to the temptation to hire a consultant, spend time with this book. It’ll restore your sanity. Then you can put your money and common sense to work solving your problems, instead of paying a smooth talker to tell you what you already know.
Review originally published September 2005.
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HL Carpenter, an experienced investor and a CPA, specializes in reader friendly financial and tax topics for individuals and small businesses, and publishes Top Drawer Ink, a newsletter that's chock full of humor and common sense information.
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Last update: January 8, 2011
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