Unlike any of the 19 other competitors, whose style rarely deviated from the conventional method of starting at one end and finishing at the other, Mr Kobayashi brought a sense of industrial efficiency to the task.

ECONOMIST: It takes guts to eat 50? of Nathan's famous hot dogs

This is clearly not a book that is meant to be read not, at least, by the traditional method of starting at the beginning and proceeding to the end.

ECONOMIST: Corporate management: Excellence revisited | The