In today's corporate and academic worlds, new management theories appear daily. They come into and fall out of favor. Few have any far-reaching influence. The same is true of management consultants. Not so the work of Peter Drucker, whose ideas on management many acknowledge to be the most influential of the 20th century.

Drucker modestly calls himself a management consultant. He is far more. Arguably, Drucker invented modern management. At least he made management conscious of itself. Most recent management theories can be traced to Peter Drucker. In a time when the word is applied to nearly anyone with a bit of expertise, Drucker truly is a guru.

Now, at nearly 90, Drucker continues to bring a global perspective to management and business that has no equal. His 29 books (5 million copies in print and translated into most of the world's languages) cover it all: industrial organization, management, leadership development, the culture of business, employee motivation, and strategy. Many of his terms and concepts have entered the language: privatization, management-by-objectives, knowledge worker, discontinuity.

As everyone should know, Drucker is not merely a management theorist. He is a philosopher, a genuine thinker, who has examined nearly every element of 20th century life. Because much of contemporary life is framed in economic and organizational terms, Drucker's thoughts naturally tend toward seeing things in the context of organizational relationships. He is a social commentator with a profound understanding of our contemporary civilization and society. Drucker is essentially a moralist for our business civilization.

Anyone who has read, for example, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), The Concept of the Corporation (1945), The Practice of Management (1954), Managing for Results (1964), The Effective Executive (1966), Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1974), Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985), or Managing for the Future, The 1990s and Beyond (1992), probably has a solid grasp of what management is all about and the challenges it faces. Anyone who has not read them has a void in their learning.

So it is with some excitement that Jack Beatty has given us a slender volume called, The World According to Peter Drucker (Free Press, 1998, 204 pages, $25). This is the first biography of Drucker. It is an intellectual biography, covering the six decades of Drucker's working life. It begins with his early anti-fascist writings (he was born and raised in Austria) and comes down to his current professorship at Stanford.

There is a discussion of all of Drucker's most important writings. Drucker himself was a willing participant in the writing of this biography, so there are numerous personal insights into how he came upon his various ideas.

Drucker relates how, when he published his influential The Practice of Management in 1954, he decided that the book would make it "possible for people to learn how to manage, something that up until then only a few geniuses seemed able to do, and nobody could replicate it. I sat down and made a discipline of it."

Beatty skillfully weaves the key experiences in Drucker's intellectual journey into a coherent whole. Reporter that he is (for The Atlantic Monthly), he does it in the style of a master storyteller.

Drucker is not a sententious, esoteric philosopher. He is down to earth, as this volume reminds us. One of his formidable abilities is to write clearly, using simple words. For example, in his groundbreaking book on American charities, Managing the Non-Profit Organization (1990), he talks simply about service ("Who is the customer?"), motivation ("start with what the person has done well"), and leadership ("always by example"). Drucker dispenses practical advice that real people can use.

Anyone who has read Drucker's books over the years will find this book to be a helpful guide to his many contributions. Those who have not read Drucker are well advised to begin with this book so as to get a sampling of the richness of his work and ideas. And a good idea of where to begin.

If everyone who professes to be a manager were to read even a few of Peter Drucker's books, there would be no need for management consultants. Consultants and most management texts tell you what to do and how to do it. Unfortunately, management is not that easy. Drucker makes you think about what you do and why you do it. That is a big difference.