Kaplan reminds us at least half a dozen times in the book that he's "an idiot." That's quote unquote. But if so, he's an idiot with a gimmick, the gimmick being misery loves company, and he's here to provide it in the form of "look who else was just as dumb as you" (or maybe even dumber)!

Well, no. No dot com investor is going to be reading this book. Pain is pain. Readers of this book will be down-sized dot com ex-employees finding some gallows humor in all the billions of wisenheimer dollars that went down the dot com drain. With the pages of this book and the stock certificates of the companies chortled over herein, one can paper a wall or...well, you can read the fine suggestions from readers below.

But the really disappointing thing about this "book" is that Kaplan didn't even try to be informative about the companies he chuckles over. I mean most bits were something like two hundred words and out, and some of that was pure repetition and woefully inadequate explanation. He just went with what he thought he knew, research be damned, threw in a few of his hormonal obsessions, stirred in some "shocking the bourgeoisie" language, some crude high school humor, and laughed all the way to the bank. The only real "insight" into what happened provided by Kaplan is the "duh" observation (which he repeats again and again) that enterprises for profit really ought to charge their customers more for the product or service than they pay to provide it.

And folks, this is a Simon and Schuster book, beautifully presented, typo free, and reasonably well edited. I mean, was there a war in the boardroom when they discussed publishing this? Didn't they (royalty publishers are investors) get the idea that they were being taken to the cleaners same as the idiots who threw their money down the dot com drain? But then again, maybe this book is making money and the laugh is on the buyer. (Not me. I borrowed it from the library.) At any rate, the book design by Bonni Leon-Berman deserved a better text.

However, this is not to say we can't learn something here. But I think Phineas Taylor Barnum said it a lot better in just six words: "There's a sucker born every minute."

Final note: on page 116, in "explaining" how send.com went bottom up, Kaplan focuses on its shipments of bottles of "exceptional wine...wrapped in...crisp, white linen...," and sums up with this pithy comment: "I chug wine."

Yes, Kaplan is the kind of guy who would chug-a-lug Chateau Petrus and that really does explain everything.

...I work for an established and successful software company which happens to be located in a San Francisco district where there used to be dozens of dotcoms around (they're ALL gone now)...the CEO of my employer brings his lunch plate over and asks if he could sit with me for lunch...the first thing he asks, "What are you reading?" Great. Instead of having a Jack Welch or Peter Lynch or even a Tom Peters book in my hand, I had to tell my employer's CEO, who I know reads many serious business books, and, of course, has to run a real technology company with real customers, real products, real profits, real shareholders, real competitors, and real business issues, that I'm spending my precious time and mental capacity reading about dotcom flameouts chronicled with sarcasm and dirty words. Fortunately, he had heard of the website before and I was able to recite off the top of my head a few quick stories of some of the more extreme situations mentioned in the book, such as the dotcom which raised $26M in venture capital just after they toured the investors in front of accountants and engineers who were faking themselves as customer service reps on dead phone lines with non-existent customers. Needless to say, we ended up changing the subject to more relevant business matters. Phew! Thanks, Pud!

Alright, those of you who aren't fans of f'dcompany.com I can understand your feelings about the book.. it is after all a "little" bit crass.

But seriously I read the website often and after hearing all the bad press about the book, I had to read it for myself. Surprisingly, I like it! For starters Pud does not change his tone for the book, he's crass on the site and he's crass on the book which to me, is honest. But mostly, I don't think he just regurgitates whats on the site.. he groups them into different segments and offers his views on why he thinks they went out of business PLUS he includes the amount of money blown for each f'd company.

So alright, its a rehash, but hey, you can get all of this in a nice, fun to read (in a Pud's way) digest without having to read through all the Joe Wang, ESC**W.com, racist, derogatory spam messages posted by some of the readers :)

My buddy likes to think "big ideas".. all the time, and I'm going to buy him this book as a gift and tell him, next time before he goes and claims discovery of the next "killer app", to see if its already in this book.. and if not, I'll listen to him ;)

Seriously, if you enjoy the site, you'll enjoy the book. I did.