A behind-the-scenes, revelatory history of McKinsey & Co., America's most influential and controversial business consulting firm, told by one of the nation's leading financial journalists. IT RANKS AMONG THE UNQUESTIONED LAWS OF AMERICAN BIG BUSINESS over the last half century: If you want to be taken seriously, you hire McKinsey & Company. For decades, its consultants have helped companies and governments come up with the strategies and habits that have shaped the world we live in. In this book, star financial journalist Duff McDonald shows how, in becoming an indispensable part of decision making at the highest levels, McKinsey has done nothing less than set the course of American capitalism. He also answers the question that's on the mind of anyone who has ever heard the word McKinsey: Are they worth it? After all, just as McKinsey can be shown to have helped invent most of the tools of modern management, the company was also involved with a number of striking failures. Its consultants were on the scene when General Motors drove itself into the ground, and they played a critical role in building the bomb known as Enron. McDonald is one of the few journalists to have not only parsed the record but also penetrated the culture of McKinsey itself-a corporate mandarin elite whose methods have been compared (by others and by themselves) to those of the Jesuits or the U.S. Marines. To an outsider, they are a consulting firm. To themselves, they are simply The Firm. This revealing book uncovers the inner workings of what just might be the most influential private organization in America.