Thirty years ago, a financial journalist set out to capture some of the anthropology of Wall Street. He used real stories, but he covered the identities with colorful fictional names, such as "Irwin the Professor," "Odd-lot Robert," and "Poor Grenville." The author himself adopted the nom de plume "Adam Smith" and his book, "The Money Game" became a best seller and in my opinion a 5-star book.

NetSlaves has all of the ingredients of The Money Game:

--real stories, with names changed

--anthropological insights into a culture that to many people is strange and unknown. The descriptions of different subcultures are accurate down to their style of dress, natural rivalries, etc.

--humor, such as the "fun with the Huns" episode in which some Food and Wine forum participants find that "their erudite conversational thread about Brie cheese and merlot wine was cut to shreds by some Hun shouting about the virtues of Velveeta and Pabst."

The reason I can only give this book 3-1/2 stars is their outlook on humanity. On p.245, they summarize by saying "people are people. More often than not, they're miserable, nasty, selfish creatures..."

They describe skilled computer programmers as "a bunch of overhyped, overpaid nobodies who are screwing the rest of us." In my experience, this is totally wrong. The programmers who have worked for me have wanted to do high-quality, professional work, and where they have not succeeded, it is because I have not done enough to protect the sanity of their environment.

"The Money Game" was a classic in part because the message was to not take its subject too seriously. "Smith's" description of his experience of taking a beating in the cocoa futures market owed more to Baba Ram Dass than to Ralph Nader.

I wonder what would have happened had the editor been able to persuade the authors of NetSlaves to adopt a similar point of view.

NetSlaves was excellent! Truly one of the most honest and well-written books I have read in a long time. As a director of online marketing, I found the book to be dead on target. Never before were the realities of working in the Internet industry presented in such a way.

In NetSlaves, we are shown the sometimes-callous reality of what it really means to work in the Internet industry. The authors keep us enthralled by recounting tales of those working in the trenches, doing what it takes to get the job done, where the best reward is often staying employed. These harsh, yet frequently amusing stories show us how fluid the industry really is, giving us the dirt never published in the Wall Street Journal.

Many of the books I have read concerning the Internet industry revolve around the latest buzzwords and the dream of a successful IPO. Most read like a dissertation on the new economy from a far-removed position. Netslaves is written in such a way that anyone can find enjoyment, whether you work in the industry or not. But be careful, once you start reading, it's hard to put it down.

If you work in the Internet industry, Netslaves is a combat manual you need to read. Bill and Steve have obviously been burned in their quest for cyber-success, and they're not afraid to show the scars.

I don't think I've ever read a book like this before - it's sort of like "Pulp Fiction Meets The Net" with shades of "True Confessions" mixed in. This is a quick read, and I've already passed it on to a family member who still harbors the belief that working in the "dot.com" field is a good career choice. I don't know if I'd go quite so far as to say that most Net careers "nasty, brutish, and short", as the authors do, but I do think it's about time that people start looking beyond the hype toward what life in the info-trenches actually entails, and this book is an excellent alternative to all the dot-com glamorizing and boosterism that's out there. Very funny, too - it helps the bitter cautionary medicine go down.

NetSlaves 2.0: Tales of Surviving the Great Tech Gold Rush, is a must read for anyone who has risked it all in the hopes of building a better life, only to fall flat on their ... Thankfully, this book is not about 24 year old dot com millionaires crying about their lost fortunes. As Tom Petty says, "Baby, even the losers get lucky sometimes," and this is a collection of stories about hard working underdogs that are worth caring about.

Charles is a young ambitious college student who loves the idea of creating an online zine. Instead of handing out a Xeroxed packet of articles to his 10 closest friends, he knows that the Internet will give him a whole new audience of readers from around the world. His passion even leads to a job at the ultimate destination for tech-nerd-intellectuals, Wired. Unfortunately Charles falls in love with the wrong girl at the same time that the Internet bubble is bursting, so Charles must find his inner resolve in order to survive physically and emotionally.

What may make NetSlaves 2.0 a frustrating read for some is the fact that most of the characters in these stories do not find a happy ending. That may leave readers wondering why the authors have bothered to bring these stories to the page at all. The reason may be that Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin simply want these stories to be heard. They have also chosen to use a mix of fact and fiction when telling these stories which may add to this frustration. The reader is sometimes left wondering how much of each story is fact or fiction.

NetSlaves 2.0 rings true because it highlights the willful ignorance that many had as they jumped on the Internet bandwagon. One of the least sympathetic characters in the book is Gene. Gene is a 12-year Proctor and Gamble marketing man who is on the brink of a mid-life crisis. Instead of buying a red Porsche and spending his evenings down at the strip club, Gene decides to pin all of his hopes on the Internet. It seems obvious from the start that his dreams of getting rich quick will never come to pass but it's still painful to see him lose his wife, kids, and house. Gene does manage to stumble upon redemption as he comes to accept his fate and bounce back to minor entrepreneurial success.

The most compelling story in the book is the Matrix-esque tale of Vincent who finds himself in possession of something extremely valuable to his employers. The drama unfolds as the company resorts to illegal tactics in order to protect their corporate assets. Vincent is standing on strong legal ground, as he tries to protect what is clearly his intellectual property, but the ultimate challenge will be coming up with the money to fight a company with nearly limitless legal resources.

Netslaves 2.0 is a quick history of how the Internet debacle occurred and the lives that were changed in the process. Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin chronicle the daily lives of some of the individual net slaves while also looking at a larger world that includes paranoid AOL execs pawing through employee emails in order to silence rumors that could hurt the company's bottom line. It is an enjoyable ride from the height of dot com mania to the crash of economic reality.

Everyone who has dissed this book obviously hasn't read it. This book is fun, and puts the entire Dot-Com Bubble and its aftermath into perspective. The people profiled run the gamut from executives to regular tech workers who went from making a great deal of money to barely getting by and the dignity that they somehow muster amidst very unpleasant circumstances. (In a way, NetSlaves 2.0 reminds me of "The Shawshank Redemption, because it's about hope, and retaining one's humanity.)

Most of what's been written about the Internet bubble is easily summarized as ``most dotcoms were thinly disguised stock scams,'' and generally lacking in insight. Lessard and Baldwin go beyond tedious repetition of standard facts and address the question of what comes next for people who didn't take enough out of their web jobs to retire. Netslaves 2.0 is presented as a series of self-contained sections, each of which centers on the story of a representative example of nine types of former dotcom employees.

The novel expository style works well, Lessard and Baldwin are engaging writers, and they avoid longwinded punditry and ``inside baseball'' filler. NS 2.0 isn't a book about the boom so much as a look at the beginning of the Internet winter. If you're at all interested in the topic, pick up a copy.