A behind-the-scenes, revelatory history of McKinsey & Company, America’s most influential and controversial business consulting firm, told by one of the nation’s leading financial journalists

Founded in 1926, McKinsey & Company has become one of the world’s leading management consulting firms, helping to invent American business and shaping its course for decades. Ushering in the age of American industrial dominance, McKinsey remapped the power structure in the White House, helped create the bar code, revolutionized business schools, and introduced the idea of budgeting as a management tool. McKinsey consultants have created the corporate behaviors that shaped our world–reinventing our idea of American capitalism and exporting it across the globe.

At the same time, however, McKinsey can also be associated with a list of striking failures. Its consultants were on the scene when General Motors drove itself into the ground, and they played a critical role in building the bomb known as Enron. Yet they are rarely blamed for the failures–at least not publicly.

McKinsey employees are trusted and distrusted, loved and despised. And far from prying eyes, they are doing behind-the-scenes work for the most powerful people in the world. In The Firm, star financial journalist Duff McDonald uncovers how these high-powered, high-priced business savants have ushered in waves of structural, financial, and technological shifts to the biggest and best American organizations. With unrivaled access to company documents and current and former employees, McDonald reveals the inner workings of what just might be the most influential private organization in America.

A riveting and timely intellectual history of one of our most important capitalist institutions, Harvard Business School, from the bestselling author of The Firm.

With The Firm, financial journalist Duff McDonald pulled back the curtain on consulting giant McKinsey & Company. In The Golden Passport, he reveals the inner workings of a singular nexus of power, ambition, and influence: Harvard Business School.

Harvard University occupies a unique place in the public’s imagination, but HBS has arguably eclipsed its parent in terms of its influence on modern society. A Harvard degree guarantees respect. An HBS degree is, as the New York Times proclaimed in 1978, “the golden passport to life in the upper class.” Those holding Harvard MBAs are near-guaranteed entrance into Western capitalism’s most powerful realm–the corner office.

Most people have a vague knowledge of the power of the HBS network, but few understand the dynamics that have made HBS an indestructible and powerful force for almost a century. As McDonald explores these dynamics, he also reveals how, despite HBS’s enormous success, it has failed with respect to the stated goal of its founders: “the multiplication of men who will handle their current business problems in socially constructive ways.” While HBS graduates tend to be very good at whatever they do, that is rarely the doing of good.

In addition to teasing out the essence of this exclusive, if not necessarily “secret” club, McDonald explores two important questions: Has the school failed at reaching the goals it set for itself? And is HBS therefore complicit in the moral failings of Western capitalism? At a time of pronounced economic disparity and political unrest, this hard-hitting yet fair portrait offers a much-needed look at an institution that has a profound influence on the shape of our society and all our lives.

A New York Times bestselling journalist sets out to explore our addiction to the quantification of everything and ends up confronting his own addiction to certainty. In the quiet of quarantine, he decides to choose ease, rather than control–pursuing habits and hobbies that bring joy and “tickles” to each and every moment–and finds peace of mind, renewed creativity, and deepened relationships are the reward.

In 2020, nothing went according to plan. Duff McDonald had intended to write a book about society’s obsession with measurements, data, and predictions, showing how it blunts individual happiness and decision-making while fueling corporate capitalism. But in the quiet of quarantine, McDonald found himself reexamining the assumptions beneath his own life choices. He also reconsidered his book, deciding instead to reframe his approach as an exploration of his own battle with what he calls the “precision paradox”–the existential struggle between our desire for ease and our need to exert control.

Drawing inspiration from an impressive range of sources–from Borges to the Buddha to Bob (Dylan) to Harry Potter–McDonald documents how he let go of his attachment to precision in favor of delving deeper into what it means to be present–in his work, his relationships, and what he calls the “science of experience.” He asks, “What should I have been doing? I should have been focusing on things that I love, not the things that anger or annoy me. I should have been focusing on things that tickle me.”

Part self-help, part memoir, Tickled is a story of how to bring joy and love into your life right now. McDonald acknowledges that “tickle” is a funny, awkward word. In one context, it’s as innocent as can be. But it also runs deeper. When something tickles you, you are in the moment, experiencing reality itself–at the vortex of truth, consciousness, and bliss. “When something tickles, that’s your soul speaking to you in the language of love, thanking you for experience,” he says. As he lays out his own personal transformation, McDonald invites readers to begin their own journeys to find out what “tickles” them, too.

This exploration of joy and presence–experiences that tickle–lies at the heart of McDonald’s unusual, moving, and profound book.