Easy Money: The Gliberal Arts

An education in the humanities is not necessarily a death wish, unless you're planning to teach. Reading Jane Austen or memorizing the Plantagenet succession will endow you with the infallible secrets of business success. Don't you believe that? Neither do I, but a shameless number of books are peddling such literary nostrums.

There is always a market for panaceas. If you lack common sense, someone will sell you a fashionable substitute. Of course, psychologists pioneered the renting of wisdom. In the '80s, historians joined the bazaar, offering The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun and tutorials on how to be a samurai. Those books were bestsellers, although the lessons seemed lost in translation. For example, "hara-kiri" was usually interpreted as "golden parachute."

Now, starving English majors are promoting themselves as business consultants. In their efforts at alchemy, they have transmuted Shakespeare's plays into case studies in management. The Bard evidently was the primordial MBA. ...