Thinking of going to university to get an MBA, the "yuppie's union card".
Peter Robinson was a speechwriter in the Reagan administration before he signed up for two years of the corporate equivalent of US Marine Corps training - an MBA course in a top business school.
In Robinson's case this was Stanford, the West Coast's answer to Harvard. Snapshots from Hell is based on a journal which recorded his day-to-day impressions of the first year on the two-year MBA assault course.
Here is where his book title came from: " . . . by offering brief descriptions of the first meeting of each class, perhaps I can at least provide snapshots, as it were, from hell." In Stanford vernacular Robinson was a `poet' - from a non-business background and thus had to cram at maths camp before even starting his sojourn in hell, where even the best and brightest sometimes shrank under the burden imposed.
While he did not understand computers or accounting, he did have a grasp of organisational behaviour - but he didn't like it.
Then there was the lack of sleep, pizza dinners every day, the fraught long-distance relationship with his girlfriend. What was he doing at business school?
During the Christmas holiday he found himself irritated in a department store queue - thought what he would say to the manager - and realised the hellish demands of the course might be worth enduring after all. He was beginning to understand how economic activities could be performed more efficiently.
In the White House he had wondered how pollsters could present the opinions of millions of voters after interviewing only a few hundred. In his data analysis classes he found out that statistics was the answer.
Snapshots from Hell is a lively and light-hearted account of a year in one of the most prestigious business schools in the world. Robinson's entertaining book is all the better for not taking its subject matter too seriously.
There was an outcry from the MBA students when a business magazine published its annual survey of business schools and ranked Stanford ninth.
They were paying $30,000 (€28,009) a year to go to a school normally ranked first or second. But ninth!
There were problems with bad teachers as well. A classmate said one particular lecturer was $3,000 wasted over a term. And when he worked this out he had to lie down.
So was it all worthwhile? After turning down Robert Maxwell and Steve Jobs, Robinson decided to work for Rupert Murdoch.
But there was a recession under way in 1990 and Robinson was made redundant - other former classmates did not fare any better.
He ended up as a writer again, not earning mega-bucks but enjoying what he did.
The one question you have after reading his story is - where did he find the time to keep a journal?