Stanley Bing Books In Order

Novels

  1. Lloyd (1998)
  2. You Look Nice Today (2003)
  3. Immortal Life (2017)

Collections

  1. The Worst Noel (2005)

Novellas

  1. Board Room Babies (2011)

Non fiction

  1. Biz Words (1989)
  2. Crazy Bosses (1992)
  3. What Would Machiavelli Do (1999)
  4. Throwing the Elephant (2002)
  5. The Big Bing (2003)
  6. Sun Tzu Was a Sissy (2004)
  7. Rome, Inc (2006)
  8. 100 Bullsh*it Jobs… and How to Get Them (2006)
  9. Executricks (2008)
  10. How to Relax Without Getting the Axe (2009)
  11. Bingsop’s Fables (2011)
  12. The Curriculum (2014)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Novellas Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Stanley Bing Books Overview

Lloyd

Celebrated columnist Stanley Bing is an anthropologist of corporate culture, a satirist of corporate greed, a comedian of the libido. In his remarkable first novel, Lloyd: What Happened, Bing gives us the last word on business in America. Brazenly honest and wildly funny, Lloyd shows us one crucial year in the life of an upwardly mobile executive for whom pain and gain walk hand in hand. Lloyd is a pretty decent guy. He has an assortment of flaws. He’s married, a little chunky, well into the mid six figures, which sounds great but means only that he has to work harder every day just to stay where he is. He can see through the corporate veil of stupidity and brutality when he wants to, which is not very often. He loves his wife and children and, suddenly, a senior financial officer named Mona. Reeling toward the millennium in the era of gross, global consolidation, the corporation is on the verge of launching the most audacious transaction in the history of capitalism. They call it Moby Deal, and Lloyd is put in charge of making it all happen, a mandate he receives early one morning through the miasma of a let me die now hangover. The good news is that Lloyd is perfectly suited to the task: he looks okay in a suit, can drink or eat just about anything that’s put in front of him, and has a strong value system that has never stopped him from accomplishing any assigned duty. Can Lloyd achieve Productivity? Can he get lean without being mean? Can he inspire increasingly greater numbers of people to do more for less while he himself does less for more? Can he gain the world without losing his soul? Can he keep his hands off a valued and extremely attractive associate? Lloyd: What Happened is brilliantly and comically annotated with color bar graphs, pie charts, diagrams, and illustrated flourishes. It is the iconographic equivalent of an illuminated manuscript for the modern world, with a story that will make readers laugh out loud and cringe with recognition of every character and situation. Bing is a master storyteller and has written what is sure to be a classic of our time.

You Look Nice Today

From the best selling author of Lloyd: What Happened, a brilliant tale about life inside the corporation; how easily such a life can unravel; and whether coming apart is really such a bad thing after all. Robert Harbert, better known as Harb, is Executive Vice President in charge of Total Quality, a position that confers upon him great powers and a ridiculous expense account. CaroleAnne Winter is the assistant who runs his life. CaroleAnne has always brought something a little offbeat to the workplace, but as anyone at the company will tell you, she is also gorgeous, appealing, and a top notch office manager. As observed by our affable, eagle eyed narrator, Fred Tell, Harb and CaroleAnne develop a relationship that’s as affectionate as it is professional. But even Harb can’t ignore that CaroleAnne’s behavior is increasingly peculiar. At the same time, Harb begins to lose traction in the hierarchy, and suddenly, both he and his Total Quality mandate are vulnerable. It’s at this moment that CaroleAnne levels a stunning charge: that she has been the target of an organized campaign of sexual harassment from her first days at the company. The investigation she demands will reach to the highest levels of the corporation. And at the center of the investigation, she insists, must be the greatest offender of all: Harb. Combining warmth, stinging satire, and humane insight in equal parts, Stanley Bing delivers a hilarious and eminently timely novel, set in a world that everyone who’s ever worked for a living will recognize as his or her own.

The Worst Noel

Does the thought of mistletoe give you hives? Does the sound of jingling bells instill fear in your heart? Do you hide under the covers from the day after Thanksgiving till New Year’s Day? And even if you love Christmas, do thehyperconsumerism, overindulgence, andtinsel covered everything make you crazy? If you said yes to any of these questions, this is the book for you. You are not alone. Everyone has a Christmas nightmare story to tell. Some of the best writers around have gone through some of the worst Christmases ever. Their tales of holly draped horror are gathered here for your amuseme*nt, from NEAL POLLACK’s Christmas ham disaster to the accidental Santahood of JONI RODGERS to BINNIE KIRSHENBAUM’s receiving what may be the worst gift ever given. And Stanley Bing gives us a peek at the lonely guy’s Xmas feast. All this, plus many more recollections of Worst Noels past. So pour yourself a glass of eggnog, chisel off a piece of rock hard fruitcake, and curl up in the big comfy chair by the fireplace where the stockings have been hung with such care and settle in to read The Worst Noel.

Crazy Bosses

Since the latter part of the century just past, Stanley Bing has been exploring the relationship between authority and madness. In one bestselling book after another, reporting from his hot seat as an insider in a world renowned multinational corporation, he has tried to understand the inner workings of those who lead us and to inquire why they seem to be powered, much of the time, by demons that make them obnoxious and dangerous, even to themselves. In What Would Machiavelli Do?, Bing looked at the issue of why mean people do better than nice people, and found that in their particular form of insanity lay incredible power. In Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up, he offered a spiritual path toward managing the unruly executive beast. And in Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, he taught us how to become one of them, and wage war on the playing field that ends in a dream home in Cabo. Now he returns to his roots to offer the last word on the entity that shapes our lives and stomps through and on our dreams: The Crazy Boss. Students of Bing and there are many, secreted inside tortured organizations, yearning for blunt instruments with which to fight will note that he has walked this ground before, looking for answers. In 1992, he published the first edition of Crazy Bosses, which was fine, as far as it went. Now, some 15 years and several dozen insane bosses later, he has updated and rethought much of the work. Back in the last century, Bing was a small, trembling creature, looking up at those who made his life miserable and analyzing the mental illness that gave them their power. Today, while still trembling much of the time, he is in fact one of those people his prior work has warned us against. His own hard won wisdom and now institutionalized dementia make this new edition completely fresh and indispensable to anyone who works for somebody else or lives with somebody else, or would like to. In short, Bing is back on his home turf in this funny, true, and essential book, peering with his keen and frosty eye at the crazy boss in all his guises: the Bully, the Paranoid, the Narcissist, the Wimp, and the self destructive Disaster Hunter. If you loved the original, classic Crazy Bosses, you’ll be thrilled to plunge back into the new, refurbished pool. If you are new to the book, strap yourself in: it’s going to be a crazy ride.

What Would Machiavelli Do

How did the rich and powerful individuals who move the earth get where they are today? Are they smarter? Faster? Better looking? Certainly not. Some are even short and ugly. What, then, is their edge?The answer is simple: they’re meaner. That’s all. And if you want to get where they’re going, you’ll be meaner, too. The good news is that once you get started, it’s easy. Walking in the steps of the Florentine master, Stanley Bing will show you how to be all the Machiavelli you can be. How to beat people who are smarter than you are. How to make other people cringe and whimper when you enter a room. How to get what you want when you want it whether you deserve it or not. Without fear. Without emotion. Without finger wagging morality. One scalp at a time. They do it. You can too. What Would Machiavelli Do? is more than a road map for people who want to get to the top and stay there. It’s a way of life you can use at home as well as at the office. A way of seeing other people from 50,000 feet as teeny tiny ants you can squish. A simple, detailed plan for those with the courage to leave kindness and decency behind, to seize the future by the throat and make it cough upmoney, power and superior office space. Some books are not for everybody. This one is. So start reading. Or get out of here. You’re beginning to get on our nerves.

Throwing the Elephant

Sit down. Breathe deep. This is the last business book you will ever need. For in these pages, Stanley Bing solves the ultimate problem of your working life: How to manage the boss. The technique is simple…
as simple as throwing an elephant. All it takes is the proper state of mind, a step by step plan, and a great leap of faith. This humble guide provides all these and more. It is Zen that enables one to take an object of enormous weight and size and mold it in one’s grasp like a ball of Silly Putty. For senior management, in truth, is the silliest putty of them all. This comprehensive course walks budding business bodhisattvas through basic skills needed to provide the simple elephant handling that makes everyday life possible, including but not limited to the primary task of following along after the elephant with a little broom and dustpan. Serious students will then move to intermediate steps, from Polishing the Elephant’s Tusks to Hiding from the Elephant When It Has Been Drinking and Feels Quite Nasty. Beyond this level lies the land of the practiced Zen masters, culminating in the ability to leverage and then throw the now weightless elephant and even play catch with it at corporate retreats. If What Would Machiavelli Would Do? was the meanest business book since the Renaissance, Throwing the Elephant provides the yang to that yin. Because sometimes you’ve got to be selfless, compassionate, and completely empty to get the job done. Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the author of What Would Machiavelli Do? and Lloyd: What Happened, a novel. By day, he works for a gigantic multinational conglomerate whose identity is one of the worst kept secrets in business.

The Big Bing

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.

Stanley 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. He has seen it all mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, the death of the three martini lunch and has himself been painfully re engineered a number of times. 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 importantly, Bing has seen management at its best and worst, and 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.

In one essential volume, here is all you need to know to master your career, your life, and when necessary, other weaker life forms.

Sun Tzu Was a Sissy

We live in a vicious, highly competitive workplace environment, and things aren’t getting any better. Jobs are few and far between, and people aren’t any nicer now than they were when Ghengis Khan ran around in big furs killing people in unfriendly acquisitions. For thousands of years, people have been reading the writings of the deeply wise, but also extremely dead Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, who was perhaps the first to look on the waging of war as a strategic art that could be taught to people who wished to be warlords and other kinds of senior managers.

In a nutshell, Sun Tzu taught that readiness is all, that knowledge of oneself and the enemy was the foundation of strength and that those who fight best are those who are prepared and wise enough not to fight at all. Unfortunately, in the current day, this approach is pretty much horse hockey, a fact that has not been recognized by the bloated, tree hugging Sun Tzu industry, which churns out mushy gushy pseudo philosophy for business school types who want to make war and keep their hands clean.

Sun Tzu Was a Sissy will transcend all those efforts and teach the reader how to make war, win and enjoy the plunder in the real world, where those who do not kick, gouge and grab are left behind at the table to pay the tab. Students of Bing will be taught how to plan and execute battles that hurt other people a lot, and advance their flags and those of their friends, if possible. All military strategies will be explored, from mustering, equipping, organizing, plotting, scheming, rampaging, squashing and reaping spoils.

Every other book on the Art of War bows low to Sun Tzu. We’re going to tell him to get lost and inform our readers how real war is currently conducted on the battlefield of life.

Rome, Inc

The world’s first corporate case study, as only the best selling Stanley Bing could tell it.A family business prospers through a productive series of brutal consolidations and rational growth. Then the rise of an executive class that pits one egotistical senior manager against another in senseless internal conflicts eventually leads to a long line of demented CEOs, excessive expansion, and foolish diversification and a high cost in shattered lives. In the end, a series of reverse takeovers leave the once proud but now overextended and corrupt parent company at the mercy of the mom and pop operations that previously cringed at the grandeur of the corporate brand. Enron? WorldCom? Try Rome, whose rise and fall carry a moral that lingers to this day for the managers, employees, and students of any global enterprise. Stanley Bing whose satirical business books are as savagely funny as they are insightful mingles business parable and cautionary tale into an ingenious, often hilarious new telling of the story of the Roman Empire.

100 Bullsh*it Jobs… and How to Get Them

The scholarly discipline of Bullsh*it Studies has blossomed in the last several years, fertilized by a number of critical works on the subject and the growing importance of the issue across a wide range of professions. Now, best selling author and lifelong practitioner Stanley Bing enters the field with a comprehensive look at the many attractive jobs now available to those who are serious about their bullsh*it and prepared to dedicate their working life to it.

What, Bing inquires, do a feng shui consultant, new media executive, wine steward, department store greeter, and Vice President of the United States have in common? What, too, are the actual duties performed by a McKinsey consultant? Other than sitting around making people nervous? Could that possibly be his core function? Likewise, what does an aromatherapist actually do, per se? Sniff things and rub them on people, for big fragrant bucks? Is that all?

The answer in all cases is ‘Yes.’ They all have bullsh*it jobs.

These few, of course, are just the beginning. Across the length and breadth of this shrinking globe, skillful bullsh*it artists have secured pleasant, lucrative employment, and are enjoying themselves more than you are. In virtually every occupation, from Advertising to Yoga Franchising, lucky individuals who ‘work’ in these coveted positions enjoy the best lives imaginable they are paid well, they rarely break a sweat, and their professions are highly respected, because nobody really knows what they do.

At once funny, useful, and tolerably philosophical, this groundbreaking work takes a close look at 100 bullsh*it jobs the money they bring with them, the actual tasks and activities involved if any, and famous and successful examples of each position, who will provide the neophyte with inspiration. Most crucially, Bing goes on to offer what others so far have not a clear, concise strategy to help job seekers at every level reach for that brass ring, knowing full well that it may be attached to the nose of a bull.

Executricks

People in the high flush of a successful but sometimes frenetic business career often look with envy at those who have entered their golden years. Ah! they think. To be retired! Free to wake when you wish, to have the time to reflect on the deeper things in life, play golf or quoits, or just go fishin’ in the middle of the day. The stressed out mind boggles at the prospect, and the lip cannot help but tremble and drool.

At the same time, you may not be emotionally or financially ready to hang it all up. Which is why, whether you’re a withered graybeard or a teeny young future hotshot in leather jodhpurs, you need Stanley Bing’s global positioning system for a sane and pleasantly successful life: Executricks, or How to Retire While You’re Still Working.

Bing is the ultimate corporate insider, one who has attained nosebleed altitude and worked long and hard enough to lose his desire to work long and hard enough. Over time, he has watched the power players who have made their jobs into a waking festival of indolence and fun, and gleaned a vast range of Executricks they have developed over the years, based around several core concepts:

  • Delegation, or getting other people to do the stuff you don’t want to
  • Absence, or the ability to get ‘work’ done while not being physically on the scene
  • Abuse of status
  • Acting visionary when confused
  • Intense engagement used only in crisis

A wellspring of Executricks flow from these simple precepts, including:

  • The use of the cell phone and BlackBerry to establish a permanent state of simultaneous Omniscience and Not Presence
  • Roping off mealtimes as zones of defensible entitlement
  • Travel as an alternative to work
  • The art of the nap
  • Golf the ultimate dodge
  • Philanthropy and social activism, a pleasant parallel universe

Executricks is the most precious of resources for those who work hard but would rather be hardly working: a secret handbook that lays bare the stratagems of those who have already ascended to the pinnacles of power. No office, home, or backpack should be without a dog eared copy. Early adopters earn extra points.

How to Relax Without Getting the Axe

People in the high flush of a successful but sometimes frenetic business career often look with envy at those who have entered their golden years. Ah! they think. To be retired! Free to wake when you wish, to have the time to reflect on the deeper things in life, play golf or quoits, or just go fishin’ in the middle of the day. The stressed out mind boggles at the prospect, and the lip cannot help but tremble and drool.

At the same time, you may not be emotionally or financially ready to hang it all up. Which is why, whether you’re a withered graybeard or a teeny young future hotshot in leather jodhpurs, you need Stanley Bing’s global positioning system for a sane and pleasantly successful life: Executricks, or How to Retire While You’re Still Working.

Bing is the ultimate corporate insider, one who has attained nosebleed altitude and worked long and hard enough to lose his desire to work long and hard enough. Over time, he has watched the power players who have made their jobs into a waking festival of indolence and fun, and gleaned a vast range of executricks they have developed over the years, based around several core concepts:

  • Delegation, or getting other people to do the stuff you don’t want to
  • Absence, or the ability to get ‘work’ done while not being physically on the scene
  • Abuse of status
  • Acting visionary when confused
  • Intense engagement used only in crisis

A wellspring of executricks flow from these simple precepts, including:

  • The use of the cell phone and BlackBerry to establish a permanent state of simultaneous Omniscience and Not Presence
  • Roping off mealtimes as zones of defensible entitlement
  • Travel as an alternative to work
  • The art of the nap
  • Golf the ultimate dodge
  • Philanthropy and social activism, a pleasant parallel universe

Executricks is the most precious of resources for those who work hard but would rather be hardly working: a secret handbook that lays bare the stratagems of those who have already ascended to the pinnacles of power. No office, home, or backpack should be without a dog eared copy. Early adopters earn extra points.

Bingsop’s Fables

A masterful curmudgeon who causes laugh out loud moments. USA Today Bing delivers his works smoothly, projecting tones of deadpan sarcasm and animated mockery befitting the often irreverent content. Publishers Weekly From celebrated business writer and Fortune columnist Stanley Bing, the bestselling author of What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing The Elephant, Sun Tzu is a Sissy, and more, comes a collection of playful fables poking fun at corporate archetypes while imparting useful and humorous lessons for anyone striving to make it big in big business. Illustrated throughout by New Yorker artist Steve Brodner, Bingsop’s Fables is the perfect addition to any executive bookshelf in need of a little humor and a lot of excellent advice.

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