BOOK REVIEW: When McKinsey Comes to Town

By Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. Doubleday, New York, hard cover, 354 pp, with bibliography and index. US$32.50.

McKinsey & Company, the consulting company that got its start in 1926 at the hands of a University of Chicago economics professor to provide professional services to companies, governments, and occasionally even baseball teams, operates famously on a code of conduct as strict as the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. It requires dealing with clients with t…