Many Unhappy Returns: One Man’s Quest To Turn Around The Most Unpopular Organization In America (Leadership for the Common Good): Charles O. Rossotti
From Publishers Weekly
A successful businessman but political neophyte, Rossotti was appointed commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in 1997; this book is a matter-of-fact recounting of his five-year tenure, which included many of President Bush’s changes to the code. An entertaining insider’s account, it reads like the bureaucratic equivalent of a police procedural. With refreshing clarity, Rossotti describes such impediments as political pressure from the White House and the “senseless issues that the [IRS] lawyers insisted on pursuing.” None of the villains are identified by name, but the author’s determination to name and praise everyone who helped sometimes make the book read like an overlong Academy Awards acceptance speech. It succeeds as a management case study, clearly laying out Rossotti’s initial analysis of apparently intractable problems, followed by the development of strategies for change, the recruitment of stakeholders and the use of skills and tricks required to shepherd the process to a successful conclusion. And the book demonstrates that dedication by honest and talented managers can produce results (even if one disagrees with them). It’s also an inspiring bit of political truth telling. (Mar. 
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From Booklist
In 1998, with public opinion of the IRS at an all-time low, Rossotti was hired as IRS commissioner. He faced the daunting task of reorganizing the behemoth organization, which had not been done since 1952. With the public and Congress clamoring for heads to roll, Rossotti was under the microscope. He was facing woefully outdated technology, including a telephone system that was busy 99 percent of the time, creaky computers with code that had been written in the 1970s that were about to collapse with the impending doom of Y2K, and a terrible system of quotas that ensured that American taxpayers were being, in many cases, persecuted and buried under red tape. Rossotti describes how he took on this challenge, which required delicacy, diplomacy, and bold initiative. Under his leadership the IRS has become more customer-friendly and moved into the information age: the IRS Web site is accessed more than nearly any other, and 40 percent of federal tax returns were filed online last year. David Siegfried
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