Rating: 
Summary: In sync with our society but a bit tiring to read
Review: I was watching Headline News at the health club when one of the entertainment stories almost made me fall off of the treadmill: someone is starting a show in which a group of people are brought to an island and filmed as they try to survive there. Each week, the participants vote one person off the island--he or she is taken home by the producers. The last one (or maybe 2) get $1m. I could just see Andersen's George Mactier scrambling around trying to sell this idea. Andersen describes life in our wired, sensation-seeking society and enlarges the most shocking and often sadly shallow features, rather like a cartoonist creating a carictature. There is so much satire and hyperbole that the reader is exhausted after a couple of chapters of reading, at least until the plot ties up at the end. Not bad and worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: top notch 21 st century anguish
Review: read this and maybe we wish the millenium was bringing us into the 19th century !ps why does lizzie land in haneda instead of narita when she comes to tokyo ?
Rating: 
Summary: This book is poorly written, predictable, and boring.
Review: How on earth can any reviewer compare this tripe to "Bonfire of the Vanities?" While Tom Wolfe's masterpiece provides a wry, entertaining look at life in NYC, Anderson's trite book reads like "See Spot Run." First of all, Anderson's writing is too self-conscious. Because of this, he can't put a sentence together to save his life. I had to re-read sentence upon sentence. This is a very, very tedious book. It is so predictable I feel like charging him for the hours I spent reading his silly book. Anderson must know the NY reviewers who gave this book rave reviews. Obviously, those reviewers never cracked the cover of this tome. I have seen better writing in second grade. C'mon, Anderson--you are no novelist! Save a tree. Quit writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Bob Kerrey is jealous
Review: One of the best things about this book is the strong sense of accomplishment it gave me when I finished it. As a Nebraskan also living in NY, I am proud of Andersen and am happy he included a few references to NE (Badlands, etc.) I thought George & Lizzie would uncover the truth behind the cancellation of his tv show after one week - I envisioned some vast conspiracy/coverup. Instead there was the hackers and brokers dirty work. And a psychotic Chaz Prieve. Andersen captured the time, the focus on politics, the market, IPOs, media, the blurring of news and entertainment, as well as marriage, jealousy, even parenting. Too bad the main characters weren't more sympathetic - hard to care about rich hippies and their guilt. Loved the inclusion of the Voice's worst place to work
Rating:
Summary: A clever,funny and unique look at NYC, LA and Microsoft
Review: The author made more amusing and accurate observations in any two pages chosen at random than other books or magazines do in their entirety. He does not just name-drop, as some of the reviewers have claimed; rather, he sharply and often very funnily comments on TV, education, Wall Street, computers and their use, the kind of people who are involved in each of the above cited areas, families, love, relationships, the United States and the world. He casts a deadly accurate eye on various topics, most of which bring a smile or a nod by the reader. For example, there is a Howard Stern interview on the radio that is scripted exactly as I believe it would sound. It is true that the book is a bit long(and for that reason, I give it 4 instead of 5 stars), but the point is more than the plot. The incisive observations are worth the journey (to the Millenium), and there is a real story as he races to the finish line. I definitely think it is worth the time to read as there is no book like it.
Rating:
Summary: Don't stop at page 500!
Review: As a long-time fan of Spy magazine, I have admired Andersen's brilliance for more than a decade. And, indeed, this book derives some of its humor from the late, great Spy (its mocking of post-modernism and nostalgia, for example). The area where I would liked to have advised Andersen when he was writing the book is in its pacing. It should not take 500 pages for the plot to get going, only for it to be wrapped up so energetically in the last 160 or so pages. Put another way, I wouldn't make dessert the best part of a meal I cooked. It should be tasty all the way through. If only the entire book were like its final quarter. Also, the main characters in the book were not at all memorable. For such bright people they had very little depth. Living a high-speed, fairly-intense life, I myself was able to relate to the media-driven world that they occupy. But I would like to have know more about how they felt about that world and less about what they did there. Let me be clear. I could not have written a book of this high quality. But I hope Andersen's next novel draws on his multiple strengths and compensates for Turn of the Century's reversible weaknesses. I am sure I will read it, no matter what.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic novel: resonant, funny, deft, powerful.
Review: Who knew that satire could be so humane? Or that a "comic" novel could have 3-dimensional flesh-and-blood characters? Or that this slippery, cuckoo era could be nailed in fiction perfectly? Truly delightful.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly the worst novel of 1999.
Review: Shallow and wordy, this novel is the worst book I have read in many years
Rating:
Summary: Unreadably bad
Review: A book legnth portion of Andersen's lingo-centric, anti-received opinion style of journalism. This is not really a work of fiction, it is more of an agglomeration of puns, once au currant concerns, and careerist tribulation. No one with an ear for language will be able to read this ugly beast.
Rating:
Summary: A very fine, smart, charming and--yes--important book.
Review: For my money neither the book nor its main characters are shallow in the least. I don't think I've read a book this funny with this much depth in years. These are excruciatingly real-seeming folks in a book that captures the flux of this crazed moment pitch-perfectly. Maybe some people just can't bear to read about financially successful people who aren't monsters. (And to the unfortunate person below who stopped reading at page 500--you deprived yourself of the novel's 150 pages of absolute page-turning fun, as well as an exquisite conclusion.)
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