Rating: 
Summary: Page turning roller coaster about a dot.com out of control.
Review: Holy Mackerel! This insider story, albeit one-sided, of Value America's meteoric rise and equally memorable crash is a page turner. This "true story" is better than any fiction I have read lately.Starting with the author's arrival at VA, David Kuo takes the reader on a journey through tyrannical leaders, pompous venture capitalists, overpaid executives, starry-eyed employees, furious customers and a laundry list of extravagant ways to waste money. Just from a purely voyeuristic vantage, this book is an exciting roller coaster ride of good fortune and bad decisions. -- Always makes for a good read. - However, from a business perspective, it is just plain frightening. From the colossal waste of investor's money to the inner-circle of executive back-stabbing, this book has all the makings of a Hollywood screenplay. I literally couldn't put it down, wondering what disaster was awaiting the cast of characters in the next chapter. That being said, I realize this book is a very subjective viewpoint of a single employee of VA. Sour grapes? Perhaps. But if even half of what the book purports to be truth is accurate, VA was once a very scary ride for both its employees and investors.
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious, poignant, timely tale
Review: Dot.bomb has it all: a great plot, amazing characters, jaw-dropping twists and some real insights into the Internet Age -- and it's a true story, written by an insider who also happens to be a gifted storyteller. I can't recommend it more highly. It's a cliche, but I really wasn't able to put this book down. It describes the rise and fall of Value America at a galloping pace that conveys the headlong vertigo of the dot.com gold rush. Its heroes and villains are so much larger than life it's hard to believe they're real people. But Kuo not only has an ear for telling anecdotes and convincing personal details, but an obvious empathy for all of the people he worked with -- including Value America's chairman, a megalomaniac with a heart of gold. Kuo is also refreshingly honest about his own role in this techno-tragicomedy.
The book reads like a combination of Douglas Coupland ("Generation X"), Michael Lewis ("The New New Thing") and Joe Klein ("Primary Colors"). That makes it a riveting read, laugh-out-loud funny, lightly introspective and keenly astute about the intensely political nature of building a business. Kuo's you-are-there perspective adds extra punch to his surprising conclusion: while you can't believe the hype about the Internet, it really is going to change the world. When I first picked this book up, I wasn't sure what to expect, or whether I would enjoy reading it given what's happening in the world today. I was pleasantly surprised on both counts. Dot.bomb is both a welcome diversion from today's headlines and a reminder of the positive potential tomorrow holds.
Rating: 
Summary: Disingenuous
Review: I'll admit -- I finished this book relatively quickly. It's a quasi-page turner; that's why I gave it three stars instead of one. But all along, as Kuo recounts his story of working for a seemingly mentally unstable CEO, he seems to feign naivete. "I saw Craig Winn as a visionary." But in the next paragraph, Kuo is pointing out how Winn was lying to the press and financial analysts. So Kuo really undercuts his own credibility by trying to play both sides here. Here's my theory: He needed to suck up to Winn to get access in order to write this book. So even though he points out Winn's erratic moments and his outright lying, he thanks Winn at the end, and praises him. Ah, the price of media access! Also, I think Kuo is embarassed, as he should be. He bought the dot-com story hook, line and sinker. He thought he'd be a millionaire, so he desperately wanted to believe Craig Winn's blather. On top of that, Kuo recruited his own wife and in-laws to work at Value America, so he's got a lot to be embarassed about! Ultimately, Kuo's own equivocation prevents this story from being genuinely compelling.
Rating:
Summary: A good and quite funny read
Review: dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath is David Kuo's first-person account of his tenure at Value America. Kuo's role at Value America was that of Director of Corporate Communications, also known as mouthpiece to the chairman. Value America was an early Internet retailer that crashed and burned quite quickly after its IPO in early 1999. The story of Value America is inherently the story of its founder and chairman, Craig Winn. Winn was the typical big vision salesman, one who could talk and impress people about the big picture, but couldn't execute things effectively. Although Winn saw the potential of the Internet to transform all areas of commerce, especially the retail sector, his visions of greatness and riches never took flight. Winn's mistake (of which there are many) was that he got caught up in his own hubris. The sad part of the Value America debacle is that it really did have a chance to do something big -- really big. But, as Kuo details in chapter after chapter, it was Winn who often got in the way of the company's ability to achieve its true potential. Kuo is a former political speech writer, and his sometime self-deprecating writing style is engaging and humorous, making the book difficult to put down. The book starts with Kuo's arrival at Value America, and in just a few pages, we see that Value America had all of the trappings that ensured the demise of most dot.coms; hype, overpaid management who are detached from reality, executive jets, inconsistent and constantly changing strategies, lying and cheating, executive hubris, and a long list of unsatisfied customers. Ultimately, it was the overpowering and unbending personality
of Craig Winn that brought the company down. In deference to Winn, it was much more than just his personality that brought down Value America; however, his personality, which was one of his greatest assets, was also his biggest detriment. Craig Winn was one part businessman and one part preacher. His close ties with Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed, as the book details, are no coincidence. Winn's ultimate vision was not just to create a multi-billion dollar company; he also set his sites on both the Governorship of Virginia and, ultimately, the United States presidency. Winn based his presidential aspirations on his meeting and conversations -- which were quite brief
-- with personalities such as William Bennett and Henry Kissinger. (I once met Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for the Doors, in a Los Angeles supermarket, but I left my aspirations for rock and roll stardom in aisle 5. Perhaps if Winn would have done the same, and stayed in touch with reality, he might have been more than a momentary paper billionaire.) As with any book written by an insider, one has to keep in mind the subjective nature of Kuo's narrative. Nonetheless, as someone who has worked internally and as a consultant at several dot.com startups, I found that much of the book sounded familiar and believable. Although the story of Value America is somewhat dated in Internet time, it still is a fascinating read of how something so right could go so wrong.
Rating:
Summary: da bomb
Review: Its a really good story about the rollercoaster ride he went through and fortunately it ended.A very interesting tale of an online company marketing its products in a very traditional way.
I think after reading this i have to re-read the amazon.com story to recollect their pitfalls and successes.
Rating:
Summary: Mad and wonderfull times - now gone
Review: I found the book both highly entertaining and a bit unsettling. Was the Internet culture really like that way back in 1999? Whoa, yes it was! The book covers the dot.bomb territory well, especially the smooth talkers and marketing types. I did miss more references to the techies and the excitement on the workers' floor in this time frame. Little mention is made of the success stories that happen alongside the dot.bomb's. and how common sense and a off-key vision could have kept one out of danger of the dot.domb euphoria. A fascinating and fun read. An excellent record of the times! Missing in the book is more reference to the legacy media and old school business's envy towards the new economy, which assisted in the downfall of these young entrepreneurs. The book confirms that it was wild, it was fun and we'll miss it!
Rating:
Summary: What a time it was!
Review: If you want to know what happened during the dot.com gold rush, DOT.BOMB is a very good place to start. It is engrossing, well-written & as funny as a fit of giggles at a wake! What a ride! J. David Kuo had me squirming with tension, panting with the pressure, dreading yet eager to learn what was going to happen next. An accessible adventure about one innocent investor enticed into high flying finance & all its attending drama.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but drags on
Review: This is a humorous read. It is enjoyable, but drags on, without really exploring the details of the final downfall of VA.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Interesting
Review: I had never heard of Value America prior to reading this book--which I know would have driven Craig Winn mad. The company never made it onto my Internet radar and didn't last long enough to change that. But what David Kuo leaves us with is a tale of one start-up which is highly indicative of what happened to other dot com companies during the same period, and that tale is quite an amusing one. When I first saw the paperback edition of this book in the bookstore, I couldn't believe there was yet another dot com book on the shelves chronicling the death of a start-up, but when I picked it up, I got hooked quickly. In Kuo's introduction, he alludes to a pre-existing fascination with Value America prior to ever having been employed there. I can remember questioning whether or not I should have bought a share of some dot com company back then, much like Kuo, so his experiences mixed with the history of Value America make Kuo the ideal person to narrate the story. After having finished the book, I couldn't believe that the characters were real people. There was just so much of many of the key players' personalities mixed into the story that it seemed almost like a novel. If you're a person who enjoys reading about start-up companies, whether or not they are dot com, you will love this book. It really puts the notion of common sense in business back in perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Craig Winn story is familiar
Review: I guess one reason I really liked this book is that my dot.com's CEO was almost the same person as Craig Winn. This manac personality time obviously did very well during the bubble.
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