Work ethics

Despite being the world’s first efficiency expert, the originator of
“scientific management” and the model for stopwatch-clicking supervisors around
the industrial world, Frederick Winslow Taylor is a name that has faded from the
roster of history. The One Best Way, Robert Kanigel’s balanced and assiduous
biography of a persistently controversial figure, is a valuable reappraisal of
the man and his arguments. Soulless slave-driver or misunderstood visionary? You
decide. Published by Little Brown/Viking, £20/$34.95, ISBN
0316882941/0670864021.