Abstract
A history of the emergence of the most prominent business school in the United States, this volume also constitutes a probing study of the role of authority in the development of American culture. Steven A. Sass traces Joseph Wharton's experiment from its origins in the ironmaster's entrepreneurial ethos; through the vigorous Mugwumpery of the 1880s; to the Gospel of the Progressive Era of civic revival and practical education; into the crises of depression and war; through the flowering of econometrics and operations research; down to the present-day vogue for the M.B.A.