With twenty years of experience as a self-described "mole in the heart of corporate capitalism," CBS executive Gil Schwartz a.k.a. columnist Stanley Bing, is a man of many words. The Big Bing, recycles two decades of artful and acid Fortune and Esquire columns into a coherent view of business as usual.

The pieces are sectioned into themes readers will recognize--office politics, technology, life on the road, men being men, job angst. A number of columns snap and sting. For example, in "You Da Man," Bing details six species of bad bosses including "Don King without the Hair" and "the last days of Dick Nixon." He spins tales from the political crypt, asking readers to join his amusement at "the range of goofy people who are thrown together in the pursuit of political advantage."

Bing is at his best in giving amusing advice (how to give good phone, win turf wars and get a room with a view) and in business travelogues about places like Las Vegas where he sees "several apparently dead people playing slots." The writing bristles with attitude. Only a moving essay on "the mourning after" September 11 interrupts the relentless cynicism of Bing's observations. Some readers will be able stay in on the jokes. Others may find his voice tiring or unkind and may note the difference between insight and wisdom. --Barbara Mackoff A mandatory addition to the library of everyone who works for a living (or would like to).

For twenty years, Stanley Bing has offered insight, wisdom, and advice from inside the belly of one of the great corporate beasts. In one essential volume, here is all you need to know to master your career, your life, and, when necessary, other weaker life forms.

Bing knows whereof he speaks. He has lived the last two decades working inside a gigantic multinational corporation, kicking and screaming all the way up the ladder. During that time, he has seen it all -- mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, the death of the three-martini lunch -- and has himself been painfully reengineered a number of times. He has made a million friends and seen many of them prosper and grow, and sadly seen others sink into consultancy. He has eaten and drunk way too much, stayed in hotels far too good for him, waited for limousines in the pouring rain, and enjoyed it all. Sort of. Most important, Bing has seen management at its best and worst, and he has practiced both as he made the transition from an inexperienced player who hated pompous senior management to a polished strategist who kind of sees its point of view now and then.

Bing's many fans from his days at Esquire and those who enjoy his current column in Fortune know that his take on the workplace is pure storytelling at its best -- sophisticated, amusing, and driven by the kind of insight that only a true insider can possess.

The Big Bing provides a corporate mole's-eye view of the society in which we all live and toil, creating one of the most entertaining, thought-provoking, and just plain funny bodies of work in contemporary letters.