SOURCE: Miller, Stephen. “The Fuel of Achievement.” Commentary 71, no. 4 (April 1981): 79-82.

In the following review, Miller views Ambition as a clear and persuasive defense of commercial ambition.

Like a Hindu god, ambition takes many forms—some distasteful, others attractive, some dangerous, others benign. Shakespeare depicted ambition in all its variety: the destructive ambition of Iago, the disciplined ambition of Prince Hal, the ludicrous ambition of Caliban, the “vaulting ambition” of Macbeth. Of Macbeth, Samuel Johnson said that in it “the danger of ambition is well described,” yet he also told Boswell that “ambition is a noble passion.” He himself, although he wrote “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” a poem that pours cold water on ambition, was a decidedly ambitious man who consorted with a group of ambitious men: Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Adam Smith, Richard Sheridan, and of course Boswell. And then there is...