Augustine's Laws, Sixth Edition » (6TH)

Norman R. Augustine is Chairman of Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation's largest aerospace/defense corporation and among the top thirty firms on the Fortune 500 List. He has held numerous high-level posts in government and private industry, including Undersecretary of the Army and Vice President of LTV Corporation, Chairman of the Council of Governors of the American Red Cross, and President of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Mr. Augustine has five times received the Department of Defense's highest civilian award, the Distinguished Service Medal, holds 13 honorary degrees, and has authored or coauthored three books. He lives in Potomac, Maryland.

How do you keep your sense of humor in the crazy business world? AIAA is pleased to announce the re-release of the updated Augustine's Laws. First published by Viking Penguin, this edition of the management classic has long been out of print. Augustine's Laws is a collection of 52 laws that cover every area of business. Each law formulates a home truth about business life that, once pointed out, is impossible to forget or ignore. Each law is imbedded in an entertaining and informative text whose humor brings into sharp focus all the complexities a manager is ever likely to face. "This is the only book that ever made me mutter, 'we're all doomed,' while laughing at the same time. I enjoyed it thoroughly."—Scott Adams, creater of "Dilbert" Law Number V: One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average output. Law Number XI: If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off. Augustine's Laws has been widely praised and quoted in the national media. The book's humor brings solace to all of us trapped in the coils of business perplexity; its sanity and brilliance will suggest multiple escapes and solutions.

Publishers Weekly

Drawing on his experience as an aeronautical engineer in industry and for the Pentagon, Augustine, vice-president of Martin Marietta Corp., formulates 52 ``laws'' designed to avoid or correct bad management practices. In this expanded version of a book originally published by a technical press, his rueful comments and facetiously didactic style, interspersed with numerous examples, quotes, aphorisms and adages, overlay much common sense and shrewd judgment. He is appalled at the inexorable rise in production costs and schedule delays, many of them caused by faulty government cost evaluation and contract-letting systems, and distressed by top-heavy administrations and over-reliance on technology. Among his targets are MBA programs, a surfeit of lawyers and experts of all kinds, along with lengthy maintenance manuals, and unnecessary committees and meetings. Rules and regulations, he concludes, cannot replace management competence. Photos. (March)