"Men Seeking Women" is a genuinely entertaining collection of stories that all, in one way or another, center around sexual relations on the internet (with the curious exception of the last story by Po Bronson which, while good, doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the collection). This is a really strong group of stories that explores the impact of the internet on the interactions between the sexes in a variety of different ways and from a variety of different angles. Some of the stories were better than others, of course, but I particularly liked "Payback Time" by Gary Krist, which takes as its theme the way men develop powerful crushes on enigmatic women they encounter on-line but of whom they know nothing; "Minesweeper" by David Liss, which is about a serial internet liar and how he justifies his awful behavior to himself; "The Face in the Glass" by Paul Hond, which is basically just effective and creepy; and "Prisoners of the Heart" which is, perhaps, not particularly realistic, but a whole lot of fun.

"The 1st $20M is the Hardest" is breezy, hip, and about as deep as a parking lot puddle.

Andy leaves the big tech company to go write some code in a sort of 90's Spirit Walk. Along the way this bright, naive, young idealist is manipulated into starting a company. The story ambles along through the "Andy in Wonderland" atmosphere of the Silicon Valley startup.

Bronson's prose is hip and cynical. Some of his vignette's are precious.

However, the story was a bit thin. The plot reminded me more of a juvenile novel than the polished work of an accomplished author. Sections of the novel are quite good, but the matrix is too weak to hold it all together. The story falls apart into a collection of amusing anecdotes.

I started "The 1st $20M is the Hardest" based on an excerpt published in "Wired". It should have stayed a short story or a novella. Bronson's wry humor helped me to finish this book, but there is not enough substance to recommend it.

"The First $20 Million..." is truly an entertaining journey through the dreams, disappointments and above all, egos, that infuse the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley. Po Bronson's style is direct and journalistic, very much in the Tom Wolfe manner. Those who are acquainted with the oncoming battle between PCs and Network Computers will find the plot even more topical: it centers on the development of a programming language strikingly similar to Sun's Java. Be forewarned, it is more a "Bonfire of the Vanities" than a "Primary Colors," and those looking for a straight thinly masked versions of today's industry moguls may be disappointed (although watch for a great lampoon of Intel Chairman Andy Grove). While clearly satirical, the novel is tempered with believable and sympathetic characters, which make it far more interesting than a simple "roman-a-clef" for industry insiders

Po Bronson's first novel, Bombardiers, a slightly surrealistic satire on bond salesmen, was a cross between Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It won some plaudits for its literary ambitiousness, but Bronson's overkill on the pointlessness of his characters' lives left a bit of a sour taste. This novel, a fictionalized story of the inventions of the Network PC and Java by a small Silicon Valley start-up, is far less stylized, but the characters are more likable, idealistic, and inspiring. This is to Bombardiers as Wolfe's The Right Stuff was to his Bonfire.

The depiction of computer nerds strikes me as realistic and sympathetic, although I'm sure not all Silicon Valley geeks appreciate the portraits. I also liked another realistic touch: there is no sex in the novel, and almost no women characters. This contrasts well with the other Silicon Valley start-up novel, Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, which starts out with a terrific portrait of life as a sleep-deprived minion of Bill Gates, then degenerates into a pilot for a sit-com that could be pitched as "It's like the cast of 'Friends' starts a software company."

I was especially impressed by how Bronson set up certain characters to be the villians of the plot, then showed us that from inside their heads they see themselves, with some justification, as the good guys. The conclusion is quite surprising: the most Machiavellian of the bad guys gets exactly what he was conniving for (a huge investment by a venture capital firm), then has to live with the bureaucratic consequences. I ended up feeling quite sorry about his plight.

Bronson is probably the most true-blue member of the small School of Wolfe (Richard Price is the senior member, with Jay McInerney floating in and out). I haven't yet figured out whether he has a huge amount of literary talent, or whether he'll simply be a very useful recorder of The Way We Live Now, but in either case he's worth reading. One big threat to his chances of becoming a great novelist is that he is probably the most handsome novelist since Hemingway, and that can cause no end of trouble.

Steve Sailer

As someone who works in the computer industry and has read George Gilder's "The Spirit of Enterprise", I found very little here that was new. Basically the book is portraits of individual entrepreneurial vitality, in Gilder's style, in the domain of internet software startups. I don't want to knock it too hard because it's written with flair, and it has bits of insight and humor now and then. I'll just knock the blurbs on the back cover. One says the author is "a genuine voice of a new generation". It's true that he is genuine, he has a voice, and he's relatively young; but he has little to say that's fresh. Another blurb is "Nobody is better at writing about digital technology". This is highly misleading -- he writes practically nothing about technology. Another blurb is that he conveys "the human energy that fuels Silicon Valley". This is somewhat misleading, because the book is about the energy that fuels internet startups, Silicon Valley is much more than internet startups, and internet startups needn't be done only in Silicon Valley.

Early in The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson points out that there is no one landmark at which TV crews can point their cameras to represent Silicon Valley. Instead, they have to resort to a montage of images; the billboards along 101 advertising job openings, the unusual architecture of Silicon Graphics' campus, the dentist-in-a-trailer who drove to Netscape to service the employees' teeth, the washer-and-dryer facility that used to be at Excite's facility. This book takes the same about people in Silicon Valley, including the entrepreneurs, the programmers, the venture capitalists, the sales people, the business people, the futurists, and others.

I found this book to be a very effective description of life here in Silicon Valley (where I live). It was also very well-written, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Bronson, contrary to the quick-turnaround approach of this culture, takes his time with the people he interviews. You get to hear their stories as they tell them, but then you learn what happens to those people over time, when things don't turn out as they'd expected (for better or worse). You get the sense that these people came to know and trust Bronson, and so told them a more well-rounded version of their stories, not the 3-second sound bite version you get in the papers and trade magazines. I liked that he profiled a range of people, not just the 20-year-old dropouts-turned-millionaires, but also the hangers on who keep trying to make it but don't. Also appearing is the CEO who juggles all the unpredictable factors that go into the timing of an IPO, the Big Thinker who tries to make meaning of all this technological wizardry, the Sales Person who uses his understanding of the engineer's mindset to gracefully steer them toward the sale, the programmer who takes off to go squirrel hunting days before a critical deadline, because he can and because if he doesn't, there will always be a critical deadline to meet.

I also thought his analyses were fair, sometimes complementary, sometimes critical. He even managed to cover George Gilder, a conservative futurist, without the smug condescension most journalists can't hide when describing conservative points of view. Even though I didn't find anyone in the book who specifically captured my own experience with Silicon Valley culture, I still found all the people he did profile fully believable - I certainly know people like these. On the other hand, I was introduced to other people I know about but haven't met, and I enjoyed getting a first-hand view of their world. I think this book has a lot to offer to people who are curious about what it's like in Silicon Valley as well as to those of us who are living it.

What an excellent book. A fast read. It was fun to read and get an inside glimpse of the new business environment taking shape in the "valley of the e-Titians!" Po Bronson' style of writing invites the reader to stay and enjoy. His choice of words, stories and metaphors is very enlighten and imaginative. Anyone wanting to get a feel for how the world of venture capitalist, start-ups, the Internet and the truly unique characters that exist in the technology valley of California must read this book. If you have a start up in your mind, read this book first. It will help you get a sense of the required commitment and creativity to be successful in the web technology world of today.

One of the greatest surprises was how the book was broken out, by the different types of business people in the "dot.com" world - i.e. the start-up, the IPO, the drop out, etc. It is a great book to use as a learning tool. It should be required reading in College business classes on setting up an Internet business.

"Bombardiers" is manic and funny.

Po Bronson's novel about bond traders is a candid look into the "greasemen" of the financial system. It tells the story of a dysfunctional SF bond trading office. The office is a corporate meatgrinder churning out profits, making those crazy or tough enough to handle the stress rich, and crushing the rest. In the pressure cooker of the bond market, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro". If you're not a pro, you're fired. One day, a new salesman Eggs Igino fresh out of grad school arrives. He's like Jesus, and he changes everything.

This book was so good, I read it in two days. At one point I had to put it down because I was laughing so hard tears were running down my cheeks. Bronson's prose is this weird melange of Joseph Heller and Hunter S. Thompson (in his early years). It's the ridiculous, mixed with base human emotions, and salted with the bizarre.

While hilarious, Bronson's plot is a bit weak. He appears to be an author who derives more from the setting then the story. I had trouble sorting out the main character's (Igino) motives. Or maybe the main character was Sid Geeder? I couldn't be sure. In addition, his two female character's (Lisa Lisa and Sue Marino) were interchangeable.

"Bombardiers" is a good read. It's got information, sex, absurdity, and cruel humor administered at an amphetamine charged pace. You won't put it down.

I read this author's second book The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest first. I really enjoyed that novel as it involves characters I can relate to in an industry I'm in (high tech start-ups). Naturally, I was a little apprehensive about reading this novel as it centers on Wall Street and bond trading. I'm not a business person, but this is my reaction after reading the book:

A lot of the banking concepts such as bonds, savings and loans, securities I didn't fully understand. But kudos to the author for structuring his prose in such a way that the specifics of bond trading is not important in moving the plot forward. It's the characters and their personal ideosyncracies and relationships with one another that grip the reader. The pace of the novel can only be described as frenetic, like a movie that incessantly cuts away to scene after scene every couple of minutes. To have an author that is able to provide the reader with a 360-degree panoramic view into the heart and life of an industry while at the same time satirizing it is pure genius.

As a quick summary of the story: Sidney Geeder is the king of mortgages. He's the best bond salesman Atlantic Pacific (AP) has. He's also a couple of months away from retiring rich with stock options. Sid's hatred for the bonds he sells is what drives him to be the best. At the same time a new kid named Mark Igino (aka Eggs Igino) joins the company. Egg's is a natural salesman and also somewhat of a renegade for not having been exposed to the house rules of AP. As expected, Eggs turns the place upside down. Sid and Eggs quickly form a friendship (more like an alliance). Naturally, AP wants to control its employees, and how it does it is the focus of this story along with a supporting cast that'll keep you grinning till the end. Truly engaging!

The author has an uncanny talent for humor in the subtleties of each character. A statement as absurd as "he lost his job because of his need to floss" generates complete empathy on the part of the reader after reading through this novel. I would recommend this book to any person with any background.

LEAP rating (each out of 5):
============================
L (Language) - 4 (well-crafted dialogue keeps your mind off the technicalities of bond trading)
E (Erotica) - 1 (let's just say, bond salesman have fun too)
A (Action) - 0 (n/a)
P (Plot) - 3 (fairly predictable ending, it's the characters that are important)

Unputdownable and laugh out loud funny, I read this book in a day and a half. Unlike Liar's Poker, there's no attempt to explain the bonds being traded, instead Bronson seems convinced that not even the market participants really understand them and focuses on having some fun, and quickly!

The sales managers are ogres, the bond salesmen themselves tortured heroes, or bastards, or idiots, or sometimes a combination of 2 or 3 of those, with some telepathic or clairvoyant skills thrown in if it will make things move along quicker. Revenge is sweet, and consumed often, served hot or cold. Stress nearly kills several characters, and ruins the life of many more. Relationships are as short and destructive as possible. But it's "cartoon violence" and the whole way the jokes keep coming thick and fast, and you're laughing so much that people are starting to ask what the hell you're reading!

It's a wild ride, and hard to get off once you're on board. Read it!

This book should have been called "What Should I Do With My Parent's Money?" Nearly all of the 50+ people who's stories made the cut (supposedly over 900 were interviewed) are greed-driven, over-educated, whiny Gen X-ers and former dot-commers who are coasting on their trust funds while trying to "figure it out" (very few have actually found their calling). If these people are truly representative of my generation I want a new birth date.

Don't make a mistake and pick up this book expecting it to even try to answer the question it asks in the title. This is a blatant ego-trip and all about how smart Po Bronson is, how empathetic he is, and by coining terms like "Boom Wrangler" & "Phi Beta Slacker", how desperate he is to be the voice of his generation.

I heard Mr. Bronson on NPR and thought this book might be perfect for one of my employees who's looking for answers, but after reading it I think I'll save her the disappointment (I mean, if these multiple-MBAs can't get it together, the rest of us don't have a chance). I'm giving it 2 stars because a handful of the stories are truly inspirational and worthwhile.

A helpful tip might be to pass over any book in which a way-too-hip photo of the author takes up half of the back cover.

Questioning his own life, author Po Bronson set out to learn how others made tough career decisions -- and lived with them.
He says he talked to nine hundred people, seventy or so in detail, and he includes the stories of fifty or so career-changers in his book.

Bronson does not offer a systematic study or a self-help book. That's important to get out of the way. As other reviewers have observed, you won't find plans or guidance for your own career move.

Instead, Bronson offers a jumble of anecdotes, unsystematic and uneven -- just the sort of stories I hear every day as a career coach. People seek new adventures. They weigh the cost (and there always is a cost). Sometimes they decide the cost is too high and they back down. Sometimes they leap and experience disappointment. And sometimes they leap and find themselves soaring.

Career-changers are hungry for guidance. Bronson's interviewees often sought his approval -- and his advice. He insists that he's not a career counselor but they asked anyway. This quest for help is typical during any life transition and underscores the need to be cautious about seeking help from whoever happens to show up.

And of course this overlap of roles can be viewed as a flaw in the book. Bronson admits lapsing from the journalist role. He gets so involved with his interviewees that the story becomes a quest, a journey-across-the-country story rather than an analysis of career choices. Bronson includes his own story, told in pieces throughout the book. This feature seemed to interrupt the flow: if the author tells his own story, we should be led to anticipate autobiography.

Despite these flaws, Bronson comes up with some sound insights into career change. He observes that people avoid change because of the accompanying loss of identity. They hang back "because they don't want to be the kind of person who abandons friends and takes up with a new crowd," precisely what you have to do following a life transition.

And he follows up with a warning of solitude that also accompanies any life change. "Get used to being alone," he advises, yet many people fear being alone more than they fear being stuck in a job they hate.

WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE offers questions, not answers. It's like attending a giant networking event. You have to sort through the stories on your own.

Despite these flaws, I will recommend this book to my clients and to other career coaches. Career change, like any change, is messy. You rarely get to move in a straight line and you always experience pain and loss. And every move is a roll of the dice: a coach can help, but there are no guarantees.

Each story in this book is unique and your own will be too. You, the career changer, must put together your own mosaic and find pattern and meaning on your own.

Several of the prominent reviews of this book seemed incredibly unfair and I wish to present a counter-opinion. I've read well over half the book, and aside from possibly two stories, I haven't found the whiny, white over-educated gen-Xers living on trust funds. In fact, the demographic spread in the book I read runs the gamut. The book never promised or pretended to have a pat answer for its title question, but is instead a collection of stories about how various people, including the author, tackled the question. Were it simply a collection of do-it-yourself success stories, then it would become what these online critics accuse it of - a saccharine menagerie of whiny white dot-commers with Bronson smugly claiming that he found his calling writing about them. Yet it fails to achieve exactly what they accuse it of, and they still criticize it. I wonder what they were expecting when they read it.

Although there are no answers, there are insights. Yes, many of the subjects stumble and/or fail, but their stumblings and failings provide as much insight into the process as the successes, if not even more, because so many of us are at exactly that level, or have been there and turned back. I think the best part about the book is the exploration of that grey area between following personal fulfillment and chasing a bona fide pipe dream, and of having the courage to face life without a pat answer. If this is a question that interests you, this is a book that is at least a worthwhile read.