Volume 40, Number 8 · April 22, 1993
The Rationalist in Power
By George W. Ball
Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara
by Deborah Shapley
Little, Brown, 734 pp., $29.95
Anyone seeking an explanation of the initial success and ultimate disillusion of Robert McNamara should first examine the influence on him of a remarkable Texan named Charles Bates ('Tex') Thornton. Thornton had been brought into the Army Air Corps by Robert Lovett, then assistant secretary of war for air, and Thornton revitalized its management and operation by evangelically preaching the gospel of statistical control. In the spring of 1942, when Robert McNamara was an instructor in the Harvard Business School, Dean Dunham advised him to join Thornton's tightly knit 'Stat Control' team composed of like-minded statistical experts (popularly called the 'whiz kids'). By working with Thornton to extend statistical control throughout the Air Force, he could use the wisdom of the business school to improve America's fighting abilities.
Review, 8856 words
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