Rating: 
Summary: Can I vote less than 1 star?
Review: this book isn't worth the paper it was written on. Poorly written, no insightfulness, and nothing new. This was a bad purchase.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the money, plus too much vulgar language.
Review: I have two major complaints about this book. First, it is only mildly entertaining. Second, Kaplan uses way too much vulgarity and cynicism.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Information but the presentation is F'd
Review: Mr. Kaplan provides an informative array of thumbnail corporate (principally e-commerce, i.e., dot bomb) obituaries spanning approximately a two-year period, where, if you weren't too busy during that same time period trying to successfully short your stocks, get additional funding for your own corporation, or simply staring at a pink slip, you may recognize a handful of the enterprises "profiled."
I use the term profiled loosely here because I found Mr. Kaplan's attempt at providing value added editorial comment to the few facts or ancillary information about these entities previously provided by those in the know to Mr. Kaplan's website to be highly distracting and on the whole useless.
This material is a quick read and if reformatted with the extraneous commentary and distracting vulgarity redacted, it would comprise a pamphlet that could be read well within an hour (or, as an homage to Mr. Kaplan, within four trips to the bathroom).
Rating:
Summary: Not worth purchasing at any price
Review: If you read pud's website, you've already read this book. There is nothing new here, nothing that a dozen other books out there don't do better.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: I wasn't expecting much, and boy did I get it. Not only is this book short in length, each commentary is ridiculously short and often devoid of any relevant content at all...the title pretty much says it all, but if people are paying this guy for his insights, they deserve to get f'd for their own idiocy. He's right, he's nobody special, but he happened to be in the right place in the right time and he tapped a vein that's made him rich and relatively famous. Lucky, very lucky. But not brilliant or insightful by any stretch of the imagination.Don't buy this stupid mini-book. Borrow it from a friend, or your clueless coworker, and laugh at the first dozen anecdotes because they'll be funny. Then you'll realize... the book doesn't go anywhere else, but it goes on and on and on... and you'll give it back an hour later, glad you didn't buy it. Just like most of us who didn't buy into the whole snake oil scam now known as "Dot-Com's".
Rating: 
Summary: A pleasant surprise from Pud
Review: Pud's book actually has some great business insights about critical flaws in companies' business plans--much more detailed vignettes than the website. As a strategy consultant, I love the short discussions of a variety of reasons companies died. At the end of the day, Pud has given readers just as much information as any of the longer flotsam-filled books on the subject. To boot, it's written in a wonderfully entertaining way. ...
Rating:
Summary: If you've read the website..the book may not be for you
Review: I love the website and love Pud's view of the world. Many times he has suceeded in stating exactly what everyone has been thinking but he says it in a way that really makes you laugh (and think). This book however, seems like a mash of the website-so if you didn't follow the site and the dailys, this book is for you. If you are a fan of the site-just beware-you may feel you've read this all before. As an aside-Pud's column after the 9/11 attacks was one of the best written by anyone anywhere and worth a re-print someplace.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun, quick read, but hardly a business book
Review: ...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!
Rating:
Summary: Never Confuse a Bull Market With Brains
Review: I've become accustomed to seeing and reading books (some of them actually good) that expound and expand on ideas that could be properly covered in a good magazine article....but this "so-called" book pushes that concept to a ridiculous extreme...taking an idea that everyone already knows - and that could be summed up in so many sound bites - and hashing it to the death that happened many moons ago...the only useful purpose of this book is for Mr. Kaplan to make more money from poor reporting of other people's troubles...it's as if Mr. Kaplan believes that he is entitled to more profits by dint of being an ambulance chaser supreme...when, in fact, he is doing little more than providing the hospital admittance reports - along with gratuitous cursing, which was needed to distract the reader from the fact that there is little substance in between the curse words... I read nothing of importance in this effort - as there was little that wasn't immediately obvious to anyone who played an actual part in the Internet gold rush, rather than sitting on the sidelines like the author... of course there were spectacular disasters in the gold rush...the low price of admittance made it possible for almost anyone to place a bet...and so, many did....knowing full well that the bets might not payoff in the end. the bottom line is that these disasters (the internet startup disasters and Kaplan's disasters) can be pretty much summed up by a single phrase - used more commonly by traders, but which now should become a part of the lexicon of the rest of us - "Never Confuse a Bull Market with Brains" this phrase goes doubly for Mr Kaplan's supposed contributions - referring to both his website and his book... so, Mr. Kaplan, I'm here to remind you that the bull market for information on the most spectacular gold rush of all time should not be used as an indication of the worthiness of your efforts.
Rating:
Summary: Read it in the Bookstore and Save Your Money
Review: THIS BOOK IN A NUTSHELL: "People without business plans that could make money burned through lots of cash, fired their employees and then filed bankruptcy. Oh, and I like porn". That is the whole book. This book is so light on content you can read it in the bookstore and save your money (like I did). Or buy it, read it over a cup of coffee and take it back. If the author spent more of the pages on some of the great content his website's members gave him for free - F'ed would have more to offer. The back story on how these companies got funding to begin with would have added SO much to the story (Think "Naked on the Late Shift"). Interviews with the people who ran some of these companies would have also been worthwhile. F'ed is a written-in-two-months-quickie-book trying to hop on the bandwagon it makes fun of and it shows. As it stands, it is nothing more than a list of dot-bombs with no research, no back story, no insight, nothing fresh, nothing new and nothing original. Fifteen years from now, if you see it in the used bookstore, buy it for your teenager for 25 cents - it might mean something more then.
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