From Publishers Weekly
After six years as a White House speechwriter for Reagan and Bush, Robinson enrolled at Stanford Business School, wrestled for two years in perpetual exhaustion with often incomprehensible mathematical, organization and marketing concepts and, upon earning his MBA "union card for yuppies," interviewed in the communications world of Robert Maxwell, Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch (who hired him for a brief stint). In the tradition of Scott Turow's One L for potential students who are curious about Harvard Law School, the author sets out with humor and perception to answer the question that no business school catalogue does: What is business school like? Then Robinson dismisses the value of an MBA degree in the economic downturn after the fat '80s; for him the degree did not pay off as a "straight and easy road to riches." Robinson explains: "Today I'm back to being what I was before I went to business school, a writer." BOMC and Fortune Book Club alternates. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
A funny and frenetic account of Robinson's crucial first year in Stanford's MBA program, offering an education in itself as well as a cautionary tale. Stanford's atypical MBA program combines Harvard's case-study approach and Chicago's business theory but has a much more diverse, laid-back student body. With graduate work at Oxford and a career as a White House speech writer behind him, Robinson was a ``poet''- -in Stanford lingo, accepted to add variety to the management consultants and number crunchers. Like most of his peers in 1988, his motive for getting an MBA (which one professor called a ``yuppie union card'') was to secure an insurance policy for a lucrative career as an investment banker, financial consultant, or the like. Robinson found himself struggling to understand not only supply-and-demand curves, but also decision trees and influence diagrams. He also discovered his classmates' appalling ignorance of economic philosophy, whether Adam Smith or Karl Marx, and the persistence of gender issues in the B-school's race-blind meritocracy. His book is an album of late-night studying, random ``cold calls'' by professors in class, impossible exams, competition, and camaraderie. Robinson got a job with media mogul Rupert Murdoch, from which he was fired less than a year later in the recession. His peers likewise graduated to diminished expectations, but all got the credentials and contacts to improve their careers or change their lives. Todays business schools, with enrollments declining, have begun to expand their programs' ties to real business experience and to balance professors' teaching responsibilities with their research, but these problems are beyond the scope of Robinson's own vivid experience. Not the ultimate B-school survival guide, but a genial description of everything about getting an MBA that you wanted to know but were afraid to find out. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Tom Peters
"Fabulous…it’s fun, it’s wild, it’s weird, I loved the book."


George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty
"Brilliant, funny, occasionally profound...the best book yet on the mazes of post-graduate American education. Don’t matriculate without it!"


Michael Lewis, The New York Times Book Review
"The book is very good…it rings wonderfully true in its detail. The author strives for humorous effect and succeeds."


Wess Roberts, author of Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun
"A refreshingly candid book ... required reading for ...anyone with an interest in the difference between advertising and reality."


Niall Ferguson, Stern School of Business, New York University
"Devastatingly funny...I assume all MBA students have read it. All their professors certainly have."


Book Description
In the irreverent and entertaining tradition of Liar’s Poker, Peter Robinson’s Snapshots from Hell is a hilarious and enlightening insider’s answer to the paramount question every prospective student asks: what is business school really like? During his first frenetic year at Stanford Business School, Peter Robinson began keeping a journal of his day-to-day impressions which evolved into this book, the writing of which he came to see as a "simple act of decency, like going back to the last calm bend in the river and nailing up a sign that reads ‘Waterfall Ahead’." From his first harrowing days at "maths camp" through the dizzying phalanx of core courses, the frenzy of exam week, the pitfalls and triumphs of the interview process (including a surreal interview with Robert Maxwell!) to being wind and dined by some of the most prestigious companies in the world, Robinson’s story is witty, candid and peopled with a remarkable cast of characters. A must read for all aspirational "Masters of the Universe" as well as MBAers, Snapshots from Hell is a fast-paced, first-hand account of the nightmare world of getting a top business school MBA, one of the glittering prizes of the ‘90s.


About the Author
Peter Robinson holds degrees from Dartmouth, Oxford and Stanford. A former speechwriter for Presidents Reagan and Bush, he is now a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute, where he writes about business and politics.

ANNOTATION

Based on the daily diary Peter Robinson kept at Stanford Business School, and peppered with a cast of unforgettable characters and situations, Snapshots from Hell answers the perennial question "What is business school really like?" as it recounts the author's own precarious, exhilarating and sleepless quest for the coveted MBA degree.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Each year tens of thousands of America's best, brightest, and most ambitious consider going to business school. The enticement is the chance to earn an impressive credential, the highly touted MBA degree. To be crass, they all want to make money. And if they don't flunk out, go crazy, or otherwise crash, some of them may even get their heart's desire. As his thirtieth birthday loomed and his friends began to acquire such grown-up possessions as homes and European cars, Peter Robinson, then a presidential speechwriter, decided the time had come to embark on a different, and more lucrative, career path. To this end, he applied and was accepted into Stanford business school's prestigious MBA program. What he quickly discovered was that business school was a more confusing and overwhelming experience than he had expected. During his first year at Stanford, Robinson began keeping the journal of day-to-day impressions and experiences that evolved into this book, the writing of which he began to see as "a simple act of decency, like going back to the last calm bend in the river and nailing up a sign that reads 'Waterfall Ahead!'" Unlike any previous book or glossy catalogue, it dares to answer, honestly and insightfully, the paramount question of every prospective student, the only question that matters: What is business school really like? In Snapshots from Hell, we follow Robinson from his first harrowing days at "math camp" through his valiant, sometimes triumphant, sometimes futile attempts to navigate his way through a dizzying phalanx of core courses. We experience the horror of a "cold call," the frenzy of exam week, the challenges of learning the language of a strange new world, and the pitfalls and triumphs of the interview process. We see what business school does to Robinson's up-and-down, long-distance romance. We are also introduced to a remarkable cast of characters, ranging from Robinson's fellow "poets," students who lack a business background, to "joc

About the Author:   Peter Robinson spent six years as a speechwriter in the Reagan White House. Among his speeches was the celebrated "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech, which Reagan delivered in Berlin in 1987. Robinson is the host of the PBS television program, Uncommon Knowledge, and the author of two previous books, It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP and Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA. A fellow at the Hoover Institution, he lives in Stanford, California.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly