- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (May 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060008814
- ISBN-13: 978-0060008819
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.8 x 2.7 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,015,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
The Internet story begins with a familiar figure in American history: the Yankee inventor. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The Internet story begins with a familiar figure in American history: the Yankee inventor. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
50 reviews
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Good if dry coverage of dot.com bust
13 Jun 2002
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
There have been a lot of books about the crash of the high tech market. This is one of the best. The coverage is thorough if at times tedious. Cassidy makes an excellent case that the lack of a business model and the prevalent "greater fool" theory led to the demise of the Internet bubble. Too many pitched the idea that if their site captured just one percent of a [Hundred] billion-dollar market, than the firm would be a success. Only even one percent was a pipe dream, and perhaps a dozen firms had the same idea. And the "greater fool" theory suggests that even if the originators are wrong, somebody else will be foolish enough to buy them out.
Cassidy concludes his good work with a lengthy table of dot.com failures, a sobering story in itself. Perhaps it is so sobering that the life and exhuberance of the subject drained away. I found the last third of the book to be more of a continuous litany of mistakes and I lost much of my interest.
34 of 44 people found the following review helpful
Embarrassing errors, spelling mistakes and confused facts
26 Sep 2002
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This should be a book of fiction. I don't know if I can count all the obvious factual errors. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, has his name wrong. He claims the Altair computer was named after a character in Star Wars. If the Altair computer was invented in 1975, and Star Wars came out in 1977, how was that possible? Duh... The book states: "In 1978, two Chicago students, Randy Seuss and Ward Christensen, invented the modem...."
No they didn't! In 1977, Christensen wrote Xmodem, the first computer program used to transfer files between computers equipped with modems; a year later, he teamed with Seuss to create the first "bulletin board system" software.
Again, Duh....
The CON here is obviously the publisher, Hyberbole, who got conned by a financial writer who apparantly had a bunch of news snippets he gathered to form a book. There is NO STORY here. Just pieces of information pasted together to form a book. The sad part is, much of the information is mis-spelled, misunderstood by the author, grammictally incorrect or just plain false.
To think people are reading this and thinking they are "Learning" something about the internet craze would be like reading a science fiction novel and think you are learning about NASA.
No they didn't! In 1977, Christensen wrote Xmodem, the first computer program used to transfer files between computers equipped with modems; a year later, he teamed with Seuss to create the first "bulletin board system" software.
Again, Duh....
The CON here is obviously the publisher, Hyberbole, who got conned by a financial writer who apparantly had a bunch of news snippets he gathered to form a book. There is NO STORY here. Just pieces of information pasted together to form a book. The sad part is, much of the information is mis-spelled, misunderstood by the author, grammictally incorrect or just plain false.
To think people are reading this and thinking they are "Learning" something about the internet craze would be like reading a science fiction novel and think you are learning about NASA.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Competent overview but not without flaws
29 April 2003
Format:Hardcover
The first thing you'd say about this book is that, however clever the title, it's erroneous: this isn't the story of a "con" at all, it's the story of a speculative bubble.
The whole point is that no-one was "conned" by the hot air. As Cassidy mentions from the outset, the prospectuses all contained large print health warnings in prominent places: "THIS COMPANY HAS NEVER MADE ANY MONEY, MOST LIKELY NEVER WILL" - but the punters still bought and bought. There were many psychological and sociological factors at play, but deception was not one of them.
For all that, Dot Con is well researched, well written and entertaining into the bargain (my copy was the paperback second edition in which the typos & manifest errors spotted by keen Amazonians (none of which, in my view, was earth-shattering) had been corrected). Cassidy describes briefly and competently the history of the internet and the general financial environment of the last 50 years, and then takes you into the maelstrom of the bubble from 1995 to 2001, all of which he portrays in suitably stunned-mullet fashion. The new edition features a lengthy epilogue which surveys the wreckage and covers the subsequent inquiry into the practices of investment banking firms and their uneasy relationships with their research analysts, all of which is still very current.
While he doesn't really dwell on it, I think Cassidy would come out in favour of more market regulation and intervention: He's especially critical of the Fed's approach to monetary policy and the atmosphere on the street which led to the boom in the first place.
In some ways (though it's hardly fashionable to say so) the investment banking firms and fund managers were as much victims of this as anyone: while the roof is blowing off the market and the choice is to join in and make hay, or watch your competitors annexing large portions of your market share while you sit on your hands, it is a singular Wall Street firm indeed which chooses to sit the boom out.
In any event this is a thoughtful and well put together book and serves as a pretty good overview of some of the most remarkable times in the history of modern finance.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Biographies & Histories > Business & Economic History
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Biographies & Histories > Company Histories
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Biographies & Histories > Finance and Stock Market History
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > E-Commerce > E-business
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > E-Commerce > E-commerce
- Books > Business, Finance & Law > Professional Finance > Investments & Securities > Stocks & Shares
- Books > Computing & Internet > Digital Lifestyle > Investing Online
- Books > Computing & Internet > Networking & Security > Security > Network Security
- Books > Computing & Internet > New to Computing > Family & Lifestyle > Investing Online
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
