The Street

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Summary: The Internet may be different...
Review: ...but getting crazy over business isn't! In the middle of the sixteenth century people began to buy tulips imported to Western Europe from Turkey, not because of how beautiful or rare they were, but because they thought their prices would keep going up...150 years ago investors bought up shares in railroads, even for companies that hadn't yet put any rolling stock on the rails...during the twenties speculators gobbled up shares of airline companies that had never flown a single passenger...and now on the eve of the new millenium, people are gobbling up shares of companies that have the fanciest web sites and no solid operational experience and steady profitability records at all.
This intelligent book was written before the beginning of the market's meltdown. This fact alone speaks volumes about Gruenfeld's insights and understanding of Wall Street, brokerage and financial analysis industry. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, the situations depicted in this book are so true to life that it's almost scary.
The only problem I have with this book is that sometimes it goes to extremes. While it may be true that investing on the market, even in sound, profitable companies is risky, I can hardly believe that "laying 100 bucks on Microsoft is no different from laying it on the eight the hard way". It may also be true that there's only one determinant of the price of a stock, and that's what people are willing to pay for it. The share price has nothing to do with the underlying value of the company at all? Yes, in frenzy times! Aren't financial evaluation theories still worth anything nowadays?
Anyway, besides the subject matter and the story itself, there are so many great lines in this book, that once you begin reading it it's impossible to put it down..."caring , altruism, generosity and charity are all admirable qualities, but essentially unreliable. Greed, on the other hand, you can bank on. Appeal to a man's greed, feed it regularly, and his loyalty is assured".

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Summary: If the British ruled America
Review: First off, this book is a real surprise in terms of its forsight of the economic meltdown in this country. And, like many TV commercials we've seen in the past few years, the author succeeded at capturing the utter rediculousness of tech-industry jargon used during that time period - which made for some very sarcastic "Guffman-style" dialogue (this flew right over many readers heads, which was obviously the point). Besides being prophetic and funny (funny for those with an above-Grisham intelligence), another success comes from the way this book truly exposes the feverish frenzy of IPO's in the late nineties.

The problem I have with this book is that it contains American characters that seem to have grown up in the U.K.. In virtually every conversation contained in this book, the characters use words and expressions that are in no way, shape, or form dialects from any part of the United States. I don't know where the author is from, but there is no doubt in my mind that his characters are 100% British. This problem has nothing to do with the industry jargon I mentioned before. I call this a problem because it really affected my reader's enjoyment - I wasn't able to fully escape into this otherwise clever, funny, suspensful, and amazingly fortelling piece of literature. Can I get a witness?!

Rating:
Summary: One of the very best of its kind
Review: I had more fun reading The Street than any book in recent memory. I got it as a gift and didn't really want to read anything about stocks and things like that but I did anyway and now I actually understand what all those people are talking about. More important, I now also know how full of baloney most of them are, and why. But anyway it's not only educational it's a very suspenseful and involving thriller with characters you can really care about. Great book!

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Summary: Storyline falters
Review: I recommend this book very highly - a great read, timely and exciting.

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Summary: Better than a year in B-school with John Grisham
Review: If I'd had this book available when I was getting my MBA and interning on Wall Street, a lot of things I perceived as inconsistent or illogical would have been a lot clearer, and I would have felt less confused. Come to think of it, I probably would have gone into a different field altogether rather than investments, where I'm now stuck. It wouldn't surprise me if, a hundred years from now, we look back at stock hustlers the way we now look back at turn of the century snake oil salesman, namely, conscience-less swindlers worthy only of contempt. And if that happens, this book will be cited as one of the reasons why. A lot of people got hosed in the dot-com madness, and even though it's hard to feel sorry for people who were looking to make a quick buck without lifting a finger, the prevailing cultural ethos said it was alright for them to do so. That needs to stop. People need to read this book. That it's a hugely entertaining read is beside the point, except insofar as it will induce people to pick it up and to recommend it to friends and colleagues. The Street is one of those rarities, a guaranteed wothwhile investment of your time and attention. DO NOT let the opportunity pass you buy (pun intended)!

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Summary: Knockout story, great writing and *relevant*
Review: If you're at all interested in, or confused by, the recent scandals in the financial world, or if you just like a great story well-written, this one's for you. Gruenfeld was a partner in the management consulting divison of a "Big 8/6/5" firm before becoming a thriller writer, and his merging of these two worlds is near-perfect in this terrific novel. He predicted the utter collapse of the dot.coms in astonishing and uncanny detail, and that alone makes The Street worth reading, but there is so much more. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Rating:
Summary: Storyline falters
Review: In what almost seems a slight fictionalization of a handful of today's top dot-coms, "The Street" doesn't consistently feel like a novel. There is quite a bit of detail as to the financial aspects of launching an IPO, and the roller-coaster ride that entails, but much of the writing felt like sheer exposition of 'let me explain how much I know about the "new economy".' This shifting of focus from story to economics is forced, and causes this book to read like non-fiction (something I did not want from this book).

The base storyline is great -- a financial guru decides to start his own dot com, after seeing the wealth of the dot coms he launches the IPOs for. And that the company, Artemis-5.com, has no tangible product, is entertaining. While entertaining and whimsical, to believe that Hanley could snag top notch board members without revealing his business plan is utterly unbelievable. Of course, life is only so good for Hanley until the SEC starts poking around. The ending to the book is where the only real suspense exists. For a book billed as a Mystery/Thriller, there isn't much mystery or thrill to learning the ins and outs of Wall Street finance.

This story is based so clearly on existing dot-coms (in particular: Yahoo, AOL, Amazon) and their executives, that to stray from the possible to the improbable doesn't work. Gruenwald relies too much on financial fact and successful dot-coms, instead of suspensful creativity, to create "The Street."

Rating:
Summary: Superb piece of realistic fiction
Review: Inspired combination of excellent wordcraft and storytelling, fully-realized characters and topical relevance. Works on any of a number of levels. Don't miss it!

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Summary: Surprises but no prizes
Review: Jubal Thurgren, SEC enforecement officer, decides to conquer the deception of dot.com success on Wall Street by taking down the charismatic young head of The Street's hottest new overnight success story.

But little in this story is actually at it seems. The author wends the reader through surprises, twists, and deceptions of his own until the book reaches its ultimately poor ending.

The story begins with James Hanley, the aforementioned young man, working in a generic Wall Street brokerage where he tires of making millions for others and decides to form his own dot.com company. As he starts up his stunningly successful startup company with no product to sell, a parallel story follows Thurgren's skepticism and his efforts to shut Hanley down. Excitement follows.

Gruenfeld obviously has done his research on the workings of Wall Street and the dot.com industry. Unfortunately, he spends so long impressing us with his depth of knowledge that I almost gave up on the book near the halfway point. At that point, however, the first surprise sends the plot into overdrive and the reader is taken on 100-some pages of adventure, suspense, and action that make the book exteremely difficult to set down.

The book ends disappointingly with possibly the worst epilogue that I have ever read. It almost reads as though the epilogue were written a year or more after the novel was completed as an effort to tie up all loose ends. In doing so, however, previous plot lines are confused and characters contradict themselves. It is a real shame.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and Banal
Review: This book is awful. No character development whatsoever, not that you would empathize with anyone in the book anyway. The situations regarding financing, market reactions, Board of Director experts, business model, etc. are so ridiculous that it was obviously written by someone with no industry knowledge and who didn't care to do any research, or who was attempting to parody the Dot Com explosion, but didn't have any insight to do so. What makes this book so bad though is that people do not act like people in this book. For instance, the main character uses the term "paradigm" over and over again, as noun, adverb, adjective, and speaks like a Scott Adams consultant caricature (only much worse), yet the people around him all act like the pointy haired manager, instead of mocking the fool.

Fortunately, the publisher used a big font and the reading goes pretty quick so the pain of being stuck with this book on a weekend trip ended mercifully much sooner than the heft would have implied.