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Mark Welch writes: "'The MouseDriver Chronicles' chronicles a modestly successful startup whose mission was to build a product and sell it at a profit -- a concept that seemed almost obscene when the authors launched their new business in mid-1999.) I saw 'The MouseDriver Chronicles' in several bookstores, and passed because it sounded like it would be yet another story of dot-com failure. But finally I decided it looked like a 'fun read' and bought it, and I'm glad I did." Mark has a more complete review, and ChrisD adds his own reaction, below. The Mousedriver Chronicles author John Lusk, Kyle Harrison pages 244 publisher Perseus Publishing rating (See reviews) reviewer Matt Welch, then chrisd ISBN 0738205737 summary Blow-by-blow account of a high-tech startup; either great or awful according to the reviews below.

I'm adding The MouseDriver Chronicles as my number-two title (after Dot.Bomb, by by J. David Kuo) on my "must read" book list for entrepreneurs.

Dot.Bomb was more fun to read, in part because it was about a dot-com company that crashed and burned, and it's always more fun to write about failure than success.

Though The MouseDriver Chronicles isn't quite as fun to read, it is more useful for potential entrepreneurs. The book recounts many logistical and planning issues, in an exceptionally well-written style, using straightforward language and sharing more details (business and personal) than I'd expected (though the details seem to fade in the later chapters, presumably to protect the trade secrets of the continuing company).

Most important, The MouseDriver Chronicles is not about a crash-and-burn dot-com failure.

It's about a modestly successful startup whose mission was to build a product and sell it at a profit, a concept that seemed almost obscene when Lusk and Harrison launched their business in mid-1999. In January 2002, that concept (build a product and sell it at a profit) sounds much better, making the book more timely. Even if there are fewer entrepreneurs this year, they all should profit from reading The MouseDriver Chronicles.

The authors especially deserve credit for admitting how "ignorant" they were (in many respects) when they received their MBA degrees from Wharton, even after earlier careers working for consulting firms. They frankly disclose some embarrassing experiences, which should profit wise readers who may experience fewer mistakes as a result.

My main gripe with the book is that it ends before the end. I expected the final chapter to recount the company's failure, or its sale to a larger company, or some other "exit strategy" that would provide "closure" for the book.

Instead, the book's chronology ends in early 2001, but the company continues even today. Ending the book a year before it reached bookstores (in January 2002) seemed quite unfair (but that is the reality of the book-publishing industry).

Fortunately, the MouseDriver.com web site contains an archive of the author's "Insider" newsletter updates, so I could read "the rest of the story" (which is still unfolding, since the company is still plodding along).

Meanwhile slashdot author/editor chrisd has a different view:

I read an advance copy of The MouseDriver Chronicles (Hereafter referred to as TMD to save me from typing too much) and disliked it immensely. I'd been studiously avoiding writing a review of it as I take no joy from writing about how little I like something. However, since reader Mark Welch was kind enough to write a review (something we here at /. appreciate, thanks Mark!), I couldn't post it without giving my two cents.

As Mark noted, TMD is an enthusiastically, conversationally written book about the founding of a company to capitalize on a single idea. That idea is to make and market a mouse shaped like a Golf Club (Driver) head. While I'm not going to talk about carpal tunnel or repetitive stress injuries, I will say that this is a bad book if you want to be excited and have a view into what starting and running a company is like.

Basically, TMD is a book about two guys, one a former Wharton MBA student and the other an Andersen (not Arthur) Consulting guy who left their respective stations "to the disdain of their friends" to start their company making silly and painful looking mice. "To keep themselves motivated," they kept a diary which they somehow convinced Perseus to publish as this book.

I had to keep reminding myself while reading that this book is not about the product they are trying to sell, so much as about their experiences starting out. I really tried. The point of such a book is to live vicariously through the protagonists and learn something along the way. The only thing I learned was that they were very excited. I really don't want to know these guys, nor do business with them. (Not that they're knocking on the door to buy ads on OSDN, but I digress.) You'll learn very little about business and starting a company from this book. You'll also really not care much about what they do to sell thier product. There just doesn't seem to be much at stake.

They take some measure of pride in some of the "guerilla" marketing they chose to employ. Including crashing a benefit party at the SF metreon and sending "Personalized email (not spam) to publications and organizations that might take an interest in MouseDriver." Ugh.

The book isn't all bad. I mean, the writing isn't bad, much better than is usually seen in management books, and it flows pretty well. You don't pick up a book like this expecting Updike. It succeeds as the kind of book meant to be read while waiting at red lights. Also, it is clear that they see the book is just further promotion for their product and their company, something not usually so straightforward in this kind of book, so it's not crass in that manner.

But in the end, it's an empty book, devoid of useful content. Sort of like caffeine-free Diet Coke. Once you're done with it, all you know is that your glass is empty and your stomach has something in it. I mention this because this is not a cheap book; Barnes and Noble retails this book at $19, you can buy any number of nice things for $19.

Maybe if I was a golf nut this book might have been better.

How about this, if you want a scrappy startup book, go read defunct GO Corp CEO Jerry Kaplans book Start-up or if you want exhausting pacing, a Michael Lewis book -- you'll get more out of a chapter in either than from The MouseDriver Chronicles.

You can purchase The MouseDriver Chronicles from bn.com. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.

markwelch writes: "Late last year, I read a truly awful book: Stephan Paternot's A Very Public Offering, a poorly-written account of the rise and fall of TheGlobe.com. The company has consistently been cited by critics as one of the worst/best examples of absurd internet-stock mania, but this book by the company's founder offered no real apologies, and provided very little insight. I don't blame Paternot, a young man who was willingly manipulated by market-makers, and who clearly is not a professional writer." Marc is less forgiving of writer John Cassidy, whose recent book Dot.Con he dissects below -- read on as he completes the thought. Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold author John Cassidy pages 384 publisher HarperCollins rating 4 reviewer markwelch ISBN 0060008806 summary A disappointing, meandering examination of the boom-and-bust world of Internet commerce which doesn't even deliver on the promise of its title by naming names.

But John Cassidy can make no such excuses for Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Cassidy offers no insight, and even fails to identify the "con" promised by the book's title. And his sloppy writing, riddled with factual and typographical errors, ensures that the book can't be accepted even as a "digest" of the events he reports.

A much better and more insightful book in this category is Michael Lewis' Next: The Future Just Happened An earlier example of a competent "industry chronicle" is Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer, by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. For a fascinating account of the "experience" of a dot-com bubble company, read dot.bomb,by J. David Kuo, or watch the movie Startup.com.

The book's eight-page prologue was mildly promising, and led me to expect a chonological report of the rise and fall of the "internet industry." I've never read any of Mr. Cassidy's articles, but the book jacket assures that he is "one of the country's leading business journalists" and "has been a staff writer at the New Yorker for six years." My expectations were low: I expected a competent journalist's account of the stock market's dot-com bubble. I was disappointed.

First, the book is riddled with mistakes: obvious typographical errors, embarassing spelling and grammatical mistakes, confusing shifts in time, and bizarre factual errors.Clearly, this book somehow avoided the common year-long delay to publication (Cassidy discusses the impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, in a book that reached bookstores during the first week of February 2002). Apparently, time was saved by skipping all proofreading, editing, or fact-checking.

Cassidy's first chapter attempts an impossible yet necessary task: recounting the entire histories of computing, the internet, and the "World Wide Web" in just 16 pages. As I read this section, I was uncomfortable, because too much of what Cassidy wrote seemed incorrect. Then, I was jarredby a glaring mistake: Cassidy wrote that the Altair computer, released in 1975,was named "after a character in Star Wars." (Like most Americans, I saw Star Wars during its first year-long run in theaters in 1977, and I recall no character named "Altair." I do recall references to Altair as a star and solar system in the Star Trek TV series.) Perhaps my training as a journalist and editor make me "more aware" of the book's many spelling and grammaticalerrors,but finding such an obvious factual error on the fifth page of the first chapter made me quite anxious about the reliability of the rest of the book.

A few pages later, Cassidy writes: "In 1978, two Chicago students, Randy Seuss and Ward Christensen, invented the modem...." As a long-time computer geek, I knew this was another mistake: programmers Seuss and Christensen didn't invent the modem (which is a piece of computer hardware). 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 tocreate the first "bulletin board system" software.

After seeing such obvious mistakes in the book's opening pages, I knew that Dot.Con would not be a reliable account of anything, but I read the book with the hope of gaining some insight into the stock market's dot-com bubble.

Second, the book's chronology keeps shifting: Dot.Con shifts between several modes. Some chapters appear to relate a chronological sequenceof events. Other chapters focus on particularcompanies (Netscape, AOL, Amazon.com).Other chapters focus on broad themes. Unfortunately, even the most "chronological" chapters don't maintain a clear chronology, often including facts and events from earlier or later years.

Often, Cassidy's "factual time-shifting" seems designed to make key events or statementslook even more foolish. But usually, it simply confuses and distracts from the real absurdity.

Finally,the book offers no new insight:Nearly everything I read in Dot.Con, I had read somewhere else before. Indeed, the book's many footnotescredit nearly all of the book's contenttomainstream news articles and other books. The main theme of the book is that the spectacular rise and fall of internet or dot-com companies in the stockmarket was a classic "speculative bubble," no different from earlier absurd bubbles. Buthundreds of critics had been saying that since the mid-1990's (and Cassidy cites many skilled analysts and brokers whose careers were ruined by their refusal to join in the feeding frenzy).

After I finished Dot.Con, I sought to identify a single fact or insight that seemed original to Cassidy, or even some fact or insight that hadn't already been recounted many times before.

I can recall only one notion that I don't recall reading elsewhere:the impact of Adam Smith's concept of"perfect competition" in an age when the internet reduces barriers to entry and removes friction from transactions. Cassidy writes: "In perfect competition, all goods sell at cost, and profits are zero." This insight helps us understand the folly of the recurring theme that because the internet is so big, it's inevitable that internet companies which holda "first mover advantage" or which capture millions of "eyeballs" will somehow earn huge profits from their vast audiences. But Cassidy doesn't seem very committed to this theory.

I expected that a book called "Dot.Con" would name names: who were the con artists, and what were the confidence schemes? Who was really to blame? Cassidy seems to waver, and I'm not sure if he intends to suggest that the dot-com crash was Alan Greenspan's fault, or whether it was the fault of brokerage-firm analysts and of journalists -- he seems to partially blame yet partially acquit each. Or perhaps it was really all just an inevitable "herd mentality" speculative bubble that was really nobody's fault.

Certainly, Cassidy does an able job of reporting that the absurd valuation of internet companies was a major aberration for the analysts and investment bankers. He often repeats that the quest for fees and profits led many investment banks to seek ever-more-absurd valuation strategies, in order to float IPOs for companies with no history of profit or even revenue. Over and over, he recounts the absurd financial figures for companies valued at billions of dollars despite short histories that promise only greater losses and virtually no prospect of profitability. He finds lots of targets for ridicule, but they are all easy targets, and the stories have been reported many times before.

Cassidy never digs below the surface, and he mostly views the rise and fall of dot-com stocks as a single cycle, one giant wave that lifted and then sank. He mostly ignores the flow of different "sub-industries" that may explain why the "bubble" continued for so long with several surges.

He ignores the impact of "buzzword investing" as venture capitalists and investors sought to stay one step ahead. (The buzzwords include: "Internet Service Providers", "e-retailing" or "business-to-consumer," "portals," "business-to-business," "Application Service Providers," and "internet infrastructure," each of which can be viewed as a separate "wave" -- or perhaps as "more hot air" that delayed the collapse of the "bubble.")

Maybe it's too soon for anyone to write a definitive account of "the Internet Mania." And maybe John Cassidy did not want to assign blame, but instead to maintain the role of an impartial reporter of the various events, and the various theories. Whatever he intended, he did a poor job. I don't recommend Dot.Con.

You really can purchase Dot.Con at Fatbrain. If you'd like to praise (or skewer) a book here yourself, it's easy. Just read our book review guidelines, then submit your own review with Slashdot's web interface.

markwelch writes: "Late last year, I read a truly awful book: Stephan Paternot's A Very Public Offering, a poorly-written account of the rise and fall of TheGlobe.com. The company has consistently been cited by critics as one of the worst/best examples of absurd internet-stock mania, but this book by the company's founder offered no real apologies, and provided very little insight. I don't blame Paternot, a young man who was willingly manipulated by market-makers, and who clearly is not a professional writer." Marc is less forgiving of writer John Cassidy, whose recent book Dot.Con he dissects below -- read on as he completes the thought. Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold author John Cassidy pages 384 publisher HarperCollins rating 4 reviewer markwelch ISBN 0060008806 summary A disappointing, meandering examination of the boom-and-bust world of Internet commerce which doesn't even deliver on the promise of its title by naming names.

But John Cassidy can make no such excuses for Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Cassidy offers no insight, and even fails to identify the "con" promised by the book's title. And his sloppy writing, riddled with factual and typographical errors, ensures that the book can't be accepted even as a "digest" of the events he reports.

A much better and more insightful book in this category is Michael Lewis' Next: The Future Just Happened An earlier example of a competent "industry chronicle" is Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer, by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. For a fascinating account of the "experience" of a dot-com bubble company, read dot.bomb,by J. David Kuo, or watch the movie Startup.com.

The book's eight-page prologue was mildly promising, and led me to expect a chonological report of the rise and fall of the "internet industry." I've never read any of Mr. Cassidy's articles, but the book jacket assures that he is "one of the country's leading business journalists" and "has been a staff writer at the New Yorker for six years." My expectations were low: I expected a competent journalist's account of the stock market's dot-com bubble. I was disappointed.

First, the book is riddled with mistakes: obvious typographical errors, embarassing spelling and grammatical mistakes, confusing shifts in time, and bizarre factual errors.Clearly, this book somehow avoided the common year-long delay to publication (Cassidy discusses the impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, in a book that reached bookstores during the first week of February 2002). Apparently, time was saved by skipping all proofreading, editing, or fact-checking.

Cassidy's first chapter attempts an impossible yet necessary task: recounting the entire histories of computing, the internet, and the "World Wide Web" in just 16 pages. As I read this section, I was uncomfortable, because too much of what Cassidy wrote seemed incorrect. Then, I was jarredby a glaring mistake: Cassidy wrote that the Altair computer, released in 1975,was named "after a character in Star Wars." (Like most Americans, I saw Star Wars during its first year-long run in theaters in 1977, and I recall no character named "Altair." I do recall references to Altair as a star and solar system in the Star Trek TV series.) Perhaps my training as a journalist and editor make me "more aware" of the book's many spelling and grammaticalerrors,but finding such an obvious factual error on the fifth page of the first chapter made me quite anxious about the reliability of the rest of the book.

A few pages later, Cassidy writes: "In 1978, two Chicago students, Randy Seuss and Ward Christensen, invented the modem...." As a long-time computer geek, I knew this was another mistake: programmers Seuss and Christensen didn't invent the modem (which is a piece of computer hardware). 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 tocreate the first "bulletin board system" software.

After seeing such obvious mistakes in the book's opening pages, I knew that Dot.Con would not be a reliable account of anything, but I read the book with the hope of gaining some insight into the stock market's dot-com bubble.

Second, the book's chronology keeps shifting: Dot.Con shifts between several modes. Some chapters appear to relate a chronological sequenceof events. Other chapters focus on particularcompanies (Netscape, AOL, Amazon.com).Other chapters focus on broad themes. Unfortunately, even the most "chronological" chapters don't maintain a clear chronology, often including facts and events from earlier or later years.

Often, Cassidy's "factual time-shifting" seems designed to make key events or statementslook even more foolish. But usually, it simply confuses and distracts from the real absurdity.

Finally,the book offers no new insight:Nearly everything I read in Dot.Con, I had read somewhere else before. Indeed, the book's many footnotescredit nearly all of the book's contenttomainstream news articles and other books. The main theme of the book is that the spectacular rise and fall of internet or dot-com companies in the stockmarket was a classic "speculative bubble," no different from earlier absurd bubbles. Buthundreds of critics had been saying that since the mid-1990's (and Cassidy cites many skilled analysts and brokers whose careers were ruined by their refusal to join in the feeding frenzy).

After I finished Dot.Con, I sought to identify a single fact or insight that seemed original to Cassidy, or even some fact or insight that hadn't already been recounted many times before.

I can recall only one notion that I don't recall reading elsewhere:the impact of Adam Smith's concept of"perfect competition" in an age when the internet reduces barriers to entry and removes friction from transactions. Cassidy writes: "In perfect competition, all goods sell at cost, and profits are zero." This insight helps us understand the folly of the recurring theme that because the internet is so big, it's inevitable that internet companies which holda "first mover advantage" or which capture millions of "eyeballs" will somehow earn huge profits from their vast audiences. But Cassidy doesn't seem very committed to this theory.

I expected that a book called "Dot.Con" would name names: who were the con artists, and what were the confidence schemes? Who was really to blame? Cassidy seems to waver, and I'm not sure if he intends to suggest that the dot-com crash was Alan Greenspan's fault, or whether it was the fault of brokerage-firm analysts and of journalists -- he seems to partially blame yet partially acquit each. Or perhaps it was really all just an inevitable "herd mentality" speculative bubble that was really nobody's fault.

Certainly, Cassidy does an able job of reporting that the absurd valuation of internet companies was a major aberration for the analysts and investment bankers. He often repeats that the quest for fees and profits led many investment banks to seek ever-more-absurd valuation strategies, in order to float IPOs for companies with no history of profit or even revenue. Over and over, he recounts the absurd financial figures for companies valued at billions of dollars despite short histories that promise only greater losses and virtually no prospect of profitability. He finds lots of targets for ridicule, but they are all easy targets, and the stories have been reported many times before.

Cassidy never digs below the surface, and he mostly views the rise and fall of dot-com stocks as a single cycle, one giant wave that lifted and then sank. He mostly ignores the flow of different "sub-industries" that may explain why the "bubble" continued for so long with several surges.

He ignores the impact of "buzzword investing" as venture capitalists and investors sought to stay one step ahead. (The buzzwords include: "Internet Service Providers", "e-retailing" or "business-to-consumer," "portals," "business-to-business," "Application Service Providers," and "internet infrastructure," each of which can be viewed as a separate "wave" -- or perhaps as "more hot air" that delayed the collapse of the "bubble.")

Maybe it's too soon for anyone to write a definitive account of "the Internet Mania." And maybe John Cassidy did not want to assign blame, but instead to maintain the role of an impartial reporter of the various events, and the various theories. Whatever he intended, he did a poor job. I don't recommend Dot.Con.

You really can purchase Dot.Con at Fatbrain. If you'd like to praise (or skewer) a book here yourself, it's easy. Just read our book review guidelines, then submit your own review with Slashdot's web interface.