Rating: 
Summary: PUD is as F*(^%ED As the Dot Coms
Review: This book is a very sad rant by Pud (Kapaln), himself a washed out dot.commer. Here is a guy who rips into many companies from which he ran banners on his site. They became F&*#ED when he could not longer get them to advertise. (HotJobs for example.) Anyone who actually is able to learn anything from this garbage probably did not pass Business 1A. All in all, a waste of paper.
Rating:
Summary: Cut, Paste, Get Million Dollar Check
Review: Classic Pud here. I'm guessing he did this on purpose, just to flaunt something, not sure what. Literally Cut, Paste, Spell Check, Get 1,000,000 check. End of story.
Rating: 
Summary: Are readers getting f'd?
Review: 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.
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