Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing

Book Description

With his singular gift for turning complex financial events into eminently readable stories, Roger Lowenstein lays bare the labyrinthine events of the manic and tumultuous 1990s. In an enthralling narrative, he ties together all of the characters of the dot-com bubble and offers a unique portrait of the culture of the era. Just as John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash was a defining text of the Great Depression, Lowenstein's Origins of the Crash is destined to be the book that will frame our understanding of the 1990s.

Customer Reviews:

Another Great Book!.......2007-09-10

Great read! I have been a financial advisor for over 15 years and love the markets and their history. Lowenstein has written two fabulous books about market changing events over the past decade, and "Origins" could be the best. For me, it was like reliving the boom (and bust) all over again; at times painful, very insightful, but not too techinical. Also, the section devoted to Enron was spectacular.

Prepare to be entertained but not educated.......2007-09-10

Mr. Lowenstein tells a compelling story about the fraud, avarice and delusion that infused the stock market's heady ride during the late 1990s, and its subsequent crash.

While the stories of Enron and WorldCom are quite gripping, Mr. Lowenstein doesn't really provide the type of analysis the book's title would imply. Mr. Lowenstein enumerates a few themes, such as executive pay and stock options, that undoubtedly played a part in executives' zeal to inflate their stock prices, but does not attempt to quantify the degree to which these themes influenced stock price movements or behaviors. He also focuses on a few stories, such as Enron, but fails to provide any technical analysis on price movements in the market as a whole. Stocks rise and fall off-stage, as in a Greek drama. In fact, there is not a single chart in the entire book.

The book also lacks detail on the mechanics of the accounting entities create by Andrew Fastow of Enron to offload liabilities. Surely the reader who cares enough about the topic to read this book must hunger for the R-rated version, rather than the G-rating given to Mr. Lowenstein's recounting. I was left craving more detail.

I would have loved to see a greater comparison between the 1929 stock market crash and our contemporary crash, but Mr. Lowenstein only devotes a few pages to such a comparison and uses faulty analysis. For example, he contends that there was less fraud in the 20s, and that it was "... mostly confined to a handful of brokers, bankers, and stock-pool operators". This understates the degree to which stock-pool operators manipulated stock prices to benefit a few insiders, and ignores some egregious characters, like Alfred Wiggins of Chase.

I really enjoyed Mr. Lowenstein's book, "When Genius Failed" and feel that he gave his readers more credit in that book. "Origins of the Crash" will leave the reader entertained but not educated. While it is a compelling read, it forces me back to the bookshelf to answer all the questions this book leaves unanswered.

A Valuable but Unhistorical Perspective.......2007-06-03

There's quite a lot to like in this book. Lowenstein has the details of the way the 'New Economy' of the '90s was hyped down pat, and how it all, inevitably, fell apart. But there's an important missing dimension. Lowenstein's book suffers from a lack of history.

As I read ORIGINS OF THE CRASH, I couldn't help but think of other books, describing astoundingly similar situtations. EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Charles MacKay, UNACOUNTABLE ACCOUNTING by Abraham Briloff, CONTRARIAN INVESTMENT STRATEGIES by David Dreman, ONCE IN GOLCONDA by John Brooks, THE WALL STREET WALTZ by Kenneth Fisher, THE ONLY OTHER INVESTMENT GUIDE YOU'LL EVER NEED by Andrew Tobias, and especially THE MONEY GAME and SUPERMONEY by George 'Adam Smith' Goodman.

The core of the great bubble was the fact that human beings don't naturally think in a logical manner, can't deal with large numbers well, are short term oriented, have a great capacity for believing nonsense, overoptimism, the use of case and other faults being unravelled by the emerging disciplines of behavioral economics and prospect theory, associated especially with Amos Kahneman and Daniel Tversky. Depite Lownstein's belief that this time was different, in fact, the elements of the bubble were exactly the same as the canal and railway manias, the small computer boom of the late 1970s, the 'era of wonderful nonsense' in the 1920s, the Great Electronics and IPO Mania of the 1960s, and the conditions just before the Crash of 1987.

So read this book, but remember the perspective is overly narrow. And especially remember that it will all happen again, in your lifetime. I've already seen it three times in mine.

Covers the topic but flawed.......2007-04-29

Lowenstein took a juicy and let's face it easy to write about topics greed and avarice, and tossed in a bunch of throw away simpleton comments that overall made me dislike him almost as much as the thieves he wrote about. Why authors can't stick to the topics at hand these days without interjecting blatantly over and over their political bias is beyond me. He also tries to adjust Adam Smith writings to support his own which comes off nonsensical to say the least. Quoting the noted liberal NYT economist, Paul "I hate Bush" Krugman says it all about Lowenstein bias. Overall, Lowenstein came off as a lightweight and this book is written for people with their minds made up already.

An important book.......2007-03-08

Roger Lowenstein is a terrific financial journalist. One of very few who really knows what he's talking about. Each of his 3 books - this one, When Genius Failed and his Warren Buffet biography are must reading for any investor. If you are going to be dealing with Wall Street you MUST be aware of what you are up against. Those guys are not your pals - they want your money!

hackoff.com: An Historic Murder Mystery set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble

Average customer rating:

Positioning his novel somewhere between the world of a dot.com thriller and analogous to a Detective Colombo television series.
Hard to put down
Loved it!
Maddness of Crowds
A great read

hackoff.com: An Historic Murder Mystery set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble
Tom Evslin
Manufacturer: dotHill press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0977464601

Product Description

Hackoff.com provides a ringside seat to the fast paced battles when entrepreneurs cross Wall Street. Like a chart of NASDAQ, this mystery is a wild ride.

Customer Reviews:

Positioning his novel somewhere between the world of a dot.com thriller and analogous to a Detective Colombo television series........2006-07-27

Positioning his novel somewhere between the world of a dot.com thriller and something analogous to a Detective Colombo television episode, Tom Evslin's hackoff.com falls effortlessly into the recent wave of fiction narratives that depict the euphoria of the boom and bust of the stock market in the late 1990s.

Evslin begins his narrative with a press release issued by Eve Gross, Chief Marketing Office of a company called hackoff.com announcing that its CEO, Larry Lazard, was found dead in his corporate office of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
CEO Larry Lazard was an ex-convict who pleaded guilty to the crime of attacking or as he termed it, "Gotcha," the credit card files of a number of major banks.
He served six months of a nine-month sentence in a federal penitentiary for white collar criminals. Apparently, as Lazard stated, "Gotcha" was not created to do harm but rather to illustrate the vulnerability of the financial systems to hackers. In fact, Lazard did not monetarily profit from his escapades, as he neither sold the credit card numbers he downloaded nor used them for his own personal gain. However, when he was released from prison, he put his knowledge to good use when he created a company called hackoff.com that would in fact prevent such attacks in the future particularly against e-commerce sites.

Lazard and his CFO Donna Langhorne were quite an ambitious team when they decided to take hackoff.com public. They hired the investment banking firm of Barcourt & Brotherson- a firm they felt could tell a credible story to potential investors concerning hackoff.com. However, they had their work cut out for them, as not only did they have to convince investors that Lazard had been rehabilitated but also that they had to convince investors that hackoff.com's practice of receiving equity or shares from companies purchasing the licenses instead of cash was not so bad, as hackoff.com is not only a software company but also a holding company of several promising e-commerce web sites.

Author Tom Evslin, as was the case with Larry Lazard, similarly founded a company that went public during the Internet bubble. However, Evslin lived to tell his story and no doubt the knowledge he gained from bringing his enterprise public helped in neatly interweaving his own experiences into his riveting narrative. He effectively captures the smoke and mirrors method used by investment bankers and traders from the time a project is conceived to the actual approval by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). Methods and practices that very often are unethical and that sometimes border on fraud in order to market a company's stock to potential investors.

Thrown into the narrative is the prospect that Larry did not commit suicide but was murdered. All kinds of scenarios are explored by Detective Mark Cohen including Larry's involvement with outsourcing some of hackoff.com's programming to Palestinians from Jenin even against the strong objections of its principal programmer Dom Montain who is against showing the company's source code.
How it all ends I leave as a mystery for the reader to find out. The single disappointment of hackoff.com is that I found the ending was somewhat confusing, nonetheless, it is a compelling read supported by well-defined ancillary characters and some engaging subplots.

Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures

Hard to put down.......2006-07-06

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It is fast-paced, with good characters and a good story. And you can learn something while you are having fun. The author provides great insight into things like how Wall Street works (or doesn't); what IPO roadshows are like; and how to manage sales people.

Loved it!.......2006-06-26

Reviewed by Cherie Burbach for Reader Views (6/06)

This book, first serialized online, has attracted readers from around the globe with its tale of murder, sex, power, and greed. Fictional CEO Larry Lazard served time in prison for hacking through bank security systems and obtaining credit card numbers. He then parlayed his conviction into an online security consulting business, which became hackoff.com. To start, the main character of Larry Lazard is annoying, abrasive, obnoxious, and yet you find yourself rooting for him. Lazard started hackoff.com in the time of the Internet bubble, as it were, which makes this story all the more exciting and fun.

Like "hackoff.com", author Tom Evslin founded a company that went public during the infamous Internet bubble. Evslin's personal experience combined with his original writing style makes hackoff.com a page-turner that will keep readers up at night trying to finish. It keeps the reader guessing, and never loses intensity. The ending is no less disappointing, making this book a satisfying read from beginning to end.

"hackoff.com" is original in its form and set up as well. Interspersed with the prose are email exchanges, chat room transcriptions, stock quotes, and interviews with the police. Each element adds something new to the story, and along the way helps define each of the characters. There's Donna, the former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model that is a CFO but longs for more, Dom, the chief technology officer that starts off as a minor character - we barely know him, and yet ends up as one of the most interesting and unique.

Besides the characters, the story itself is captivating. The way the author describes the initial public offering for "hackoff.com" is quite fascinating, and I felt like I was getting a behind the scenes look at what really takes place with an IPO and how the stock market reacts to it.

This was one of the most original and entertaining books I've read. I loved it. LOVED it! It held my attention from beginning to end, and at just under 650 pages that is no easy accomplishment.

Maddness of Crowds.......2006-04-01

How many millions of words have been written about the mass psychosis that afflicted the investment and technology worlds at the end of the century will have to be counted by others, however, you will gain a better understanding of how and why that period happened by reading Tom Evslin's novel than by reading any articles or essays. I guess you had to be there to understand the sick joke that was played on all of us that came to be known as the bubble. Tom Evslin was there and Hackoff.com is a fun way to read about it.

A great read.......2006-03-19

This book is for you if:
* You like mysteries with twists and turns which require the last chapter to be solved
* You have lived in or are interested in the internet bubble experience. The use of stock price tracking and internet chat rooms is absolutley brilliant and a true reflection of how everyone behaved during that time.
* You just happen to like darn good books!

Buy, Lie, and Sell High: How Investors Lost Out on Enron and the Internet Bubble

Average customer rating:

Before you buy, read what they say about Amazon.com
Good look at what went wrong during the Internet bubble

Buy, Lie, and Sell High: How Investors Lost Out on Enron and the Internet Bubble
D. Quinn Mills , and Daniel Quinn Mills
Manufacturer: Pearson Education
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Download Description

In Buy, Lie, and Sell High, Harvard Business School Professor Daniel Quinn Mills offers the first systematic analysis of both the Internet stock bubble and the Enron scandal. Drawing upon extensive new research and insider interviews, Mills uncovers both

Customer Reviews:

Before you buy, read what they say about Amazon.com.......2005-01-10

I used the feature of searching and reading to check it out right here, online. I searched for their write-up of amazon.com. And it's there, on page 60.

Read those pages first. If you think the authors give an intelligent and insightful perspective on Amazon's role in the internet bubble, then by all means buy and read the book.

Good look at what went wrong during the Internet bubble.......2002-10-04

Buy, Lie, and Sell High provides an interesting look at the Internet bubble and what caused it.

It was a perfect storm of greedy people with little to no business experience, combined with unethical accounting firms, loose federal regulators, new technologies, and a hungry public looking to make a quick dollar.

While the book has ?Enron? in the title, there is not a whole lot about Enron in the book, perhaps 10 pages.

The book has a number of case studies of classic dot bombs. I am surprised that with all of the case studies, Mills did not discuss one of the biggest bombs, Value America.

Amazon.com

Canals. Railroads. Automobiles. Computers. The Internet. Each represented revolutionary shifts in the way Americans would live and do business. Each saw a corresponding rush of investors to get in on this great new investment opportunity. Each saw a lot of investors go broke. In The Internet Bubble, Anthony Perkins and Michael Perkins, founding editors of The Red Herring, look at it this way: In the early 20th century, there were more than 500 automobile companies in the U.S. Now how many are there? Same with the new Internet companies, the Perkinses predict. A few will grow into profitable businesses in 10 or 20 years, but even then, their stocks may not be worth much more than their 1999 prices. They argue that buying an Internet stock today is really nothing more than gambling that someone else will come along and buy it from you for more money.

The book includes an overview of the biggest players in the Internet explosion, the market mania for Internet stocks, and profiles of companies such as Amazon.com, Yahoo! and At Home. The authors also interview venture capitalists who help new companies get off the ground and the investment bankers who help them go public. And while they don't pretend that they know when the Internet bubble will burst, or what the damage will be, they are convinced that most .com companies will never make a dime. The book concludes with some thoughts about investing in this climate, and argues that ignoring the Internet may be as dangerous to your portfolio as investing too much. Some guidelines about product cycles and diversification appear, but the biggest rule seems to be: Don't be the one holding the hot potato at the end of the game. --Lou Schuler

Book Description

The spectacular Bull Market in high-tech stocks is the investment story of the decade.

The numbers are astonishing. The Internet boom has created new household names such as Yahoo, Amazon, and America Online -- companies that today command billions in market value. Internet startups like Healtheon and eBay have seen their stocks sky-rocket over 3000 percent since their IPOs, and dozens of other Internet stocks have doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled on their first day of trading.

Here is a market where:

entrepreneurs like the thirty-something founders of Yahoo and Amazon become global billionaires overnight;

money-losing startups command market valuations that make the captains of traditional industry cry their hearts out and tremble with competitive fear;

and venture capitalists and investment bankers cash in big on companies barely out of the cradle.

But individual retail investors -- the outsiders in this turn of the century roulette game -- are left to foot the bill, paying exorbitant prices for stocks that will end up diving off a cliff.

TheInternet Bubble is the story of the turbulent world ofhigh-tech stocks, a place where fortunes aremade and lost in a day. This book uncovers the innerworkingsof an industry that increasingly thrives ongreed and hype. It shows who is really getting rich, and how they use small investors to finance their empires.

Silicon Valley insiders Anthony and Michael Perkins provide a behind-the-scenes look at the forces -- and the people -- stoking the money engine in the technology stock market. They show how the allure of fast-paced innovation and overnight success has driven an ongoing market frenzy around Internetstocks, creating what they call an "Internet Bubble." Most important, the authors show that, when the Bubble inevitably bursts, Main Street -- not Wall Street -- will take the big hit, unless individual investors take steps to protect themselves now.

This is a book that will make every investor in America think twice before chasing the latest "hot" Internet stock.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book!.......2003-02-26

I read this book over 2 years ago and am glad I did! This saved me plenty of $$$$.

Review for a MBA/MSE Class.......2001-04-16

With the current shakeout of high tech stocks on both the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchanges, you would think a lot of people were losing money. But according to the authors of this book, the only people losing money are the ones who bought the stocks at overvalued prices. The ones who made money were the insiders and the people who sold before the downturn. These people or the general public that made money were able to find even greater "fools" willing to buy their stocks at those outrageous prices and who were subsequently left with millions in stock value losses. Also, the insiders have cashed out long before the current shakeout going on in the market place. So, the "moral" of the story is to be an insider so that you know what's going on inside the companies you own stock. "The Internet Bubble" focuses on these insiders, namely the venture capitalist (VCs). The authors also talk about the world of investment bankers. The book lists all the major players in the investment banker and venture capitalist world and gives a brief history about each. The authors also have a final note or epilogue to the reader in that you should sell your stocks as soon as possible. Their rational is that all the Internet companies would have to have enormous growth to justify their stock pricing. Of course anyone can say that is time to sell because the Internet bubble will burst, but no one knows when exactly it will burst. If we did, none of us would need to work! Just like today with stocks at a low, I can say that its time to buy because they will go back up eventually. Am I correct? Probably, but the question is when will they go back up? Again, if I knew, I wouldn't need to work! All in all, I did find this book helpful in understanding the world of "insider trading". I would not recommend it to people who already know about investment banking and ventures capitalists. The book is fairly easy to read even though I got confused with all the statistics that were used throughout the book. There is also a comic strip of Doonesbury before each chapter to offer comic relief. These strips mock the world of Internet investing. Even though they mock Internet investing, I find them to be generally true. Examples of this include taking a company public even though they will never show profits. Another comic has an Internet company going public without a robust product and "suckering" the public into buying the stock because they are an Internet company.

this book scared the c**p out of me.......2001-02-11

As a "dot-com" kid I suddenly found it was the new millenium and I had a ton of money to blow. I read this book and the math was so dead-on I knew it was correct. But who could guess when the bubble would burst? Starting in March, 2000 it clearly started to burst but everytime there was a "dead cat bounce" I would go out and buy a million bucks worth of stocks only to watch that million turn to zip when the market fell further. This book is a great book, not from an historical perspective, but from an investment perspective. The fundamentals they talk about to analyze the bubble are useful now in determining which tech companies out there right now might have real value.

Good, gutsy book.......2000-04-04

Criticisms first: This book was a) somewhat clunky to read, more like a schema for a book than a book itself; b) somewhat thin; c) a little repetitive; and d) had a title only a glossator could love.

Now ... plaudits: The ever-contrarian freres Perkins are biting the hand that feeds them -- and it apparently tastes good. After years of being the house pet of venture capital firms up and down the West Coast, the last year has seen Red Herring toughen up somewhat. They don't just parrot vapid management and VC claims -- they analyze them, scoff at them, and generally do things that the trade press isn't supposed to do with full-page buyers of glossy ads.

This book continues the tradition, with muscular prose that amounts to chest shots at Kleiner Perkins (it overstates the jobs it has created; it helped fuel the current irresponsible bubble; and uber-investor John Doerr's radar regularly locks in on bogies).

This was good, tough journalism. While it may just be a coincidence, but I have found it heartily refreshing to see this book out, followed by Fortune's recent cover piece on dot-com financial machinations, and the Forbes expose on MicroStrategy.

Redemptive and highly recommended.

excellent book, easy read.......2000-03-29

this book was a fabulous read. I especially enjoyed the Dilbert cartoons at the front of each chapter. Does anyone know where to get these photos. My book is at home and I want to download them from my computer. I checked Dilbert site and nothing. A must read for a reality check into these markets.

Average customer rating:

Hypocritical advice from a master schmoozer
A must read
Picking up the pieces,or why you should listen to mother
shallow
The Silicon Valley Nostradamus's

The Internet Bubble
Anthony B. Perkins , and Michael C. Perkins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

ASIN: B00006JO68

Book Description

The Speculative Market Bubble has Burst -- Where are the Investment Opportunities Now?Two years ago, the first edition of The Internet Bubble forecast the collapse of overvalued technology stocks. Since then, dot-coms have folded, the NASDAQ took a nosedive, and investors have lost billions. Now that ersatz super-companies Amazon, Yahoo, and Cisco have come down to earth, what can investors do?

According to authors Anthony and Michael Perkins, investors shouldn't give up. The Internet and technology revolution is just getting started, they say. New investment opportunities are developing rapidly. The second phase of the Internet -- what the authors call the "Evernet" -- is upon us, and there are gems among the techno-rubble.

In this updated and revised edition of their bestseller, the authors discuss the companies that survived, the few that thrived, and the best bets to become tomorrow's blue chips. They turn their attention to the future of high tech, exploring the fallout -- which isn't over yet -- of the dot-com explosion and predicting where the Web will weave its way next.

With a new introduction and thorough revisions throughout, this is the essential insider's guide to the forces and people who drove the technology stock market past its breaking point and the postburst climate that will reveal the real winners of the high-tech market.

Customer Reviews:

Hypocritical advice from a master schmoozer.......2003-01-01

The ultimate hypocrisy. Here's a book full of ideas lifted from analysts and magazines, written solely to cash in on a trend. Perkins thinks so little of his advice that he did not follow his own suggestions. His magazine, The Red Herring, is a textbook example of dotcom excesses, bloat and "what goes up must always go up" thinking. Long after publication of the first edition, he was blithely making the same foolish mistakes he warns against in his book. As a result, the magazine went through a series of layoffs and downsizings and continues to teeter on the brink of insolvency.

Tony Perkins is a master of getting invitations to events in Silicon Valley and sucking up to the insiders. But trust me, you do not want to waste your money on this cynical, hypocritical advice from someone who is a business failure.

A must read.......2001-11-13

I have to disagree with the reviewer from Mountain View. Maybe he's in the industry and therefore knows all the inside information that's to be found in this book, but for those of us who are just trying to figure out how best to manage our portfolios, this book is a must.

The Mountain View reviewer says that "much of the book consists of a rehash of familiar and/or obvious information." Well, that information is familiar now precisely because the first edition of Internet Bubble made it so. The Perkins brothers were the first to dissect the financial food chain that
exists between VCs and investment bankers. I read that first edition, and I'm glad I did. It saved me from losing my shirt.

Given their track record, and the fact that I'm still keeping some of my assets in stock, how could I not read the second edition?

As for the Doerr quote, I was frankly amazed to see it, because the Perkins certainly don't treat the guy with kid gloves in the book. Maybe Doerr was just being honest when he called Internet Bubble the best researched book on Silicon Vallley ever. I know I agree.

Picking up the pieces,or why you should listen to mother.......2001-10-18

By Jamis MacNiven, Just the pancake guy
I run the lamest bookstore in the world. We have no books and I haven't necessarily read the one I'm reviewing. So what difference does that make? I'll probably outlast Amazon and no one paid any attention to my review of the Internet Bubble in 1999 (at least I didn't) so this is just perfect for our through-the-looking-glass-world of today. OK, maybe I had a peek at the galleys and I can say that The Revised Edition will be an even bigger success then its predecessor. Michael Perkins and his brother Tony are the ultimate insiders as founders of the Red Herring Magazine (the only magazine we carry). These guys simply ran the math and said, in the first edition, (I paraphrase) that we were living in a house of cards so flimsy that when a slight breeze came by the Internet stock market was going to come tumbling down and all the kings horses...
They provided a long list of stocks with the recommendation to sell immediately. I must admit that I was swept away but the promise of unearned riches so I ignored the warning and I was even all set to move my little gray-haired mother into some pretty snappy startups (I had all the hot tips). She was so old fashioned that she decided to buy certificates of deposit, a piece of a Hollywood movie and a trailer park in Santa Barbara. The CD's barely broke 4% and the trailer park moved up smartly but the movie (an embarrassing teen flick) has returned about 250%. And she hasn't even seen the movie! "Is an average net pretax of 140% good?" she asks with a straight face.
The Revised Edition summarizes our fall from grace but also shines light on many new areas of the business from which the next great thing will hopefully emerge.
In Silicon Valley we continue to demonstrate brilliance, toughness and an unquenchable optimism and this means we will learn from the past and keep on creating the future. You would do well to heed the Bubble books and when in doubt, listen to your mother.

shallow.......2001-10-18

Note: this review is for the second edition of the book. I have not seen the first edition. The timing of the first edition would probably rate it a higher review.

This book outlines the operations of the technology investment industry, paying particular attention to the Internet-related hype and surrounding activities that arose in the latter half of the 1990s. Chapters are devoted to venture capitalists and to one of its star players (Kleiner Perkins), to the investment banking industry, some particular details on some Internet companies, high-tech investment advice, biotech, and some Trudeau comics.

Industry-watchers will find little new in the book. There are some anecdotes relating to early-stage funding of Netscape, Yahoo and Amazon that may not be widely known. Unfortunately, much of the book consists of a rehash of familiar and/or obvious information. The book is packed with 1-2 sentence quotations from famous or semi-famous players; most of these are mainly truisms and many are utterly redundant. This feels too much like a piece out of a contemporary flashy (but shallow) business magazine.

Who should read this book? Perhaps somebody who knows nothing about venture capital, technology investing, or the information technology and particularly the Internet-related industries. For people familiar with these subjects, the majority of the content will be familiar. Maybe I'll pass this book on to my grandmother.

On the back cover of the book there is a quote from John Doerr: "The Internet Bubble is the best-researched book on Silicon Valley ever!". Apart from being so self-serving (given that Doerr gets a lot of attention in the book), this statement is blatantly false. I've read several books on Silicon Valley and I guarantee you that "Internet Bubble" is not particularly strong in its research. Try "Fire in the Valley" for early history, "Inside Intel" (written without the official sanction of Intel), or anything by Robert X. Cringely. For its length, Tom Wolfe's essay "Two Young Men who Went West" (recently reprinted in Hooking Up) captures the spirit of Silicon Valley better than anything. I believe it was actually written in the early 1980s, but it's so spot-on that it could have been written in 2000.

The Silicon Valley Nostradamus's.......2001-10-05

Like clockwork, these two predicted the burst of the 'bubble' with uncanny detail. While we were all drinking from the magic punchbowl, and listening and dancing to the VC and Ibanker 'sirens' and drums...these two sat on the sidelines and held up a big sign that said, "You are punch drunk with internet juice".

Did we listen? Ironically most of us did not, and many even pushed this book away saying 'I don't want to know what's in there'. It is hard to be popular at a raging party by repeatedly saying 'the party ended Saturday night, it is Tuesday morning, why are you all still here?'.

Like the scene from Titanic where a crew member says, 'Haven't you heard, the ship is sinking and there aren't enough life rafts'...these two have now offered you their prophecies again.

Can you afford not to read this one? I know I can't.

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Canon Color Bubble Jet Printer Copier Scanner Fax USER's MANUAL MultiPASS C5500
Canon Computer Systems
Manufacturer: Canon Computer Systems
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: B000MP2B7S

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The Internet Bubble - Inside The Overvalued World Of High-tech Stocks - & What You Need To Know To Avoid The Coming Shakeout
Anthony B. and Perkins, Michael C. Perkins
Manufacturer: Harper-business
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IWZMFS

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The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High-Tech Stocks--And What You Need to Know to Avoid the Coming Shakeout
Anthony B.; Perkins, Michael C. Perkins
Manufacturer: HarperBusiness
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O81KU2

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Internet Bubble: insude the Overvalued World of High-tech Stocks
Anthony; Perkins, Michael Perkins
Manufacturer: Nikkei
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KF7IXM

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Internet Co-op survives bubble burst with service : An article from: Boulder County Business Report
Caron Schwartz Ellis
Manufacturer: Boulder Business Information Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | e-Docs | Formats | Books
ASIN: B000BE79CW
Release Date: 2005-09-13

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