This should be required reading for anyone about to hire a management consultant. Matthew Stewart is a former consultant himself and although he now describes his time working in consultancy as "an experiment", he did well enough to set up his own firm.

Here he brilliantly sets about unpicking the central tenets of management thinking, in the process claiming that most management writers, thinkers and consultants are "not concerned with the management of business, but with the business of management". In other words, they care more for their careers and earnings than the success of the companies they advise.

True to the title, Stewart is unafraid of tackling the giants and legends of management thinking, from the father of scientific management—and, by default the first management consultant—F W Taylor, to Peter Drucker, the man many still see as the inventor of corporate strategy.

The book leaves a slightly unpleasant aftertaste, partly because of its smart Alec tone, but mostly because it raises so many awkward questions.