When a friend of mine wrote a business-strategy book a few years back, a major metropolitan daily published a devastating review that included the question, "Trees died for this?" Yet the book was a success. If you understand why, then you know why James Champy has, with Nitin Nohria, written The Arc of Ambition: Defining the Leadership Journey.

My friend, who had a germ of an interesting idea, hoped that if he could publish it in book form he’d have enough credibility to get on the speakers circuit. Once on the speakers circuit, he could build a consulting practice. He did. He now has a national reputation.

Champy’s situation is different, because he already made his reputation as the co-author, with Michael Hammer, of Re-engineering the Corporation: The Manifesto for Business Revolution, which launched the re-engineering craze of the early 1990s. But Champy still needs to publish a book from time to time to indicate that he continues to think big thoughts and to keep his name in the public eye. It isn’t obvious to me why Nohria, a respected professor at Harvard Business School, joined in this enterprise, but it’s clear that, from Champy’s standpoint, as long as the book gets published it doesn’t have to be any good.

This one isn’t.

The Arc of Ambition makes a number of grand claims about its own ambitions. Champy and Nohria assert that they will "answer a fundamental question: What is the quintessential human trait?...It is ambition." The authors promise to help readers learn from experience as readers move along the arc of ambition, so they can be more successful. The authors pledge to explain "just when ambitious people should embrace change."

In fact, they do none of these things. They skim across the surface of the issues associated with ambition and greatness. They seem to hope that the volume of their examples and the grandiosity of their claims will obscure the fact that they did no real research or analysis. While the book touts the "original interviews" that the authors conducted, there appear to be just a handful—one of them with actor Chuck Norris, of all people.

In one slim chapter of 17 pages, the authors tell the stories of the ambitions of Daedalus, Icarus, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, CNN founder Ted Turner, Time-Warner Chief Executive Gerald Levin, and Time-Warner executive Chuck Dolan. Actually, those stories are told just in the first two pages. The chapter’s remaining 15 pages continue the name-dropping at almost the same mind-numbing pace and offer just as little insight into what drove these people or how the rest of us can emulate them.

When the book does offer advice, it’s wishy-washy. The authors say that great people persevere, sometimes for decades—unless their initial idea is wrong, in which case they don’t persevere. The authors say to act quickly—unless the times call for acting slowly and deliberately. Nowhere does the book explain how to tell the difference.

It does state two strong opinions. First, great leaders need to build their ambition on grand values; they should try to do some good with their successes. Second, "these demanding times...require an ambition of exceptional intensity. And yet corporations are still largely run by cautious executives marching to measured drumbeats." But neither idea is developed. The book includes a few fresh examples from outside the U.S., in particular from India, which may broaden the perspective of American readers. But the examples are just drops in a very large bucket full of painfully obvious names.

The sad fact is that, from Champy’s standpoint, the book will probably accomplish his purpose of keeping his name out there. At the least, the book will add to the list of publications that will be cited as he is introduced and ascends a podium to address an audience of business leaders.

But this isn’t a real book. It should have been a feel-good desk calendar—the Ambitious Hero of the Day for March 31 is...Pablo Picasso.

Trees died for this?