Rating: 
Summary: A few bright spots in an otherwise dull book
Review: ...Most of this book consists of reprints of articles about particular runaway projects, including the Denver airport baggage handling system, the FAA's next-generation Air Traffic Control system (which replaced single keystrokes with 12 or more mouse clicks), and Bank of America's MasterNet. Some of this is interesting, but only some, and only somewhat; there is very little analysis, except in the introduction (which is worth reading).
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, not very technical, and of sporadic interest
Review: After reading the other reviews of this book, I expected to find a light read more likened to "America's Most Shocking Police Videos", but I was mostly disappointed.The first series of articles on the Denver airport debacle (reportedly they set out to build the largest airport in the country but ended up with second-largest airport in Denver) made virtually no reference to software. The contractors of the baggage system ran into problems with physical access to the terminal, changing requirements, and uncooperative City officials, but they didn't discuss the software issues much. It was a typical political mess. The story behind the FAA's failed air-traffic-control system was the most interesting technically, and the failed New Jersey DMV project was enlightening about using the wrong tool for the job. The story on the failed California DMV system is *two pages* long, and they mention "unspecified software problems" as being involved. The story about the Adidas warehousing software failure was three pages long, and I did not find a single lesson to take from it. These do not look like any inside information to me. This book was a fairly enjoyable four-hour read (really!) but it was not worth the $30 I spent on it. Borrow it from the library or a friend before spending yours.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, not very technical, and of sporadic interest
Review: After reading the other reviews of this book, I expected to find a light read more likened to "America's Most Shocking Police Videos", but I was mostly disappointed. The first series of articles on the Denver airport debacle (reportedly they set out to build the largest airport in the country but ended up with second-largest airport in Denver) made virtually no reference to software. The contractors of the baggage system ran into problems with physical access to the terminal, changing requirements, and uncooperative City officials, but they didn't discuss the software issues much. It was a typical political mess. The story behind the FAA's failed air-traffic-control system was the most interesting technically, and the failed New Jersey DMV project was enlightening about using the wrong tool for the job. The story on the failed California DMV system is *two pages* long, and they mention "unspecified software problems" as being involved. The story about the Adidas warehousing software failure was three pages long, and I did not find a single lesson to take from it. These do not look like any inside information to me. This book was a fairly enjoyable four-hour read (really!) but it was not worth the $30 I spent on it. Borrow it from the library or a friend before spending yours.
Rating: 
Summary: Good reading
Review: Although slightly short on analysis (you may want to check out Edward Yourdon's book "Death March" for that) this book presents a number of massive failures that made me think again about how large projects should be run and how lack of management, failure to communicate and plain politics can waste enormous amounts of money and lets profitable companies go bankrupt. It's not really a book about software engineering or large-scale project management but more a collection of anecdotal evidence.
Rating:
Summary: A well-structured collection of disaster reports
Review: Although this book can hardly be called original (most is reprinted articles), the material inside is well worth the recreational reading time of a software developer or manager. Most articles are light and informative, although the reader may be pressed to find application for the 'lessons' learned therein. Only one glaring bad spot in the book: a master's thesis is included that covers the Bank of America MasterNet failure. This 'thesis' is so poorly written and difficult to read, I question the value of the writer's degree. Otherwise, the book is firmly in the 'okay' category.
Rating: 
Summary: A light read on a serious subject
Review: Although this book can hardly be called original (most is reprinted articles), the material inside is well worth the recreational reading time of a software developer or manager. Most articles are light and informative, although the reader may be pressed to find application for the 'lessons' learned therein. Only one glaring bad spot in the book: a master's thesis is included that covers the Bank of America MasterNet failure. This 'thesis' is so poorly written and difficult to read, I question the value of the writer's degree. Otherwise, the book is firmly in the 'okay' category.
Rating:
Summary: Reports from the Disaster Areas of the IT Age
Review: If you're looking for a solid book on avoiding IT disasters, this isn't it. On the other hand if you want to see what not to do, if you want to find good examples of what can go wrong in IT, if you need to put the fear of God in a CIO or a manager, then this is your book. Collecting reports on some of the worst, stupidest IT mistakes, the book examines what went wrong and why. It's dry and depressing reading (about halfway through I had to take a break), but its also informative. These are the real deals, and they aren't pretty. Though this will not be the greatest book you read or the most helpful, it's still very, very useful. It's good as a compliment to more helpful material, but the useful collecting of data and the attempts to be unbiased earn it 4 stars instead of 3.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting for what it is.
Review: Know what you're getting when you buy this book! This book isn't a remedy book. Mostly, its about "famous software runaways", that is, projects that have made it into the mainstream media. It does talk about why those projects fail, but there is only one chapter on that, and its not the meat of the book. Also the descriptions are from a non-technical point of view, and are generally reprints from other sources. Buy this book if:
A. You are a computer professional, and you want to know what really happened with the Denver baggage handling system, the DMV scrapped computer system, etc. This book does a pretty good summary of "what really happened" with each failed project in the book. B: You aren't a computer professional, but you have to contract for computer services and you want to know how and why big projects fail. For me, the best part of this book was finding out that the denver baggage system collapsed, not so much because the vendor didn't know what they were doing, but because they were sabotaged by their client (the city of Denver). The same people delivered a working baggage system for their original client, United Airlines, at that same airport; but they weren't sabotaged by UA.
Rating:
Summary: A well-structured collection of disaster reports
Review: The book is a previously unattempted collection of a series of papers from different sources about big and resounding software project failures. The emphasis is on management and organisational rather than on technical issues. Overall, it enlightens about what can go wrong and how, analysing the most common failure reasons.
Rating:
Summary: Misleading...
Review: This book suffers some major flaws, which are not well represented on the back cover or in the introduction. 1) The story telling is incredibly dull. The author desperately needs some lessons from Cringely. 2) The story telling is all third-hand. The author had no first hand experience in any of the disasters, nor did he bother to personally interview any of the participants. Instead, he simply compiled information from public media sources. 3) The story telling barely relates to software development at all. Many of the stories superficially relate management failures or legal battles with hardly a reference to the actual software projects/issues. 4) The story telling is often not even by the author himself! Some of the stories are simply reprints of professional journal articles by other authors. Tellingly, these are often the more (barely) interesting stories. I think the book cover misrepresents the contents substantially. I felt sort of ripped-off. 2 stars only because it is one of the few books that collects a lot of this information in one place.
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