Present Value

The opening scene in this book is deliciously funny; beware if you've ever lost your temper at your kid or had to wait in a car-queue at school or the day-care center. And there is plenty of wit elsewhere too in this wonderful satire of the blackberry set. Worth taking some time off from your email to read! But Willett is not afraid to be sentimental either, which is why some readers may be disappointed by the ending. I wasn't. This is a funny book, but it has a secret at its center: a heart. In the end it is about making up not breaking up, and I respect it for that. Also, unputdownable.

Wow, he nailed it. If you ever worked for a large corporation, particularly at the executive level, you KNOW these people. Yeah, Willet trashes the CEO and portrays him as a self-centered incompetent, but he couldn't have built a company that successful without a brain and some astute politicing. But all the ladder-climbing, and ass-covering, and back stabbing, and greed, and...he got it right. Sent a copy to my Father-in-Law and he dropped it at about page 100, just when it really getting good. Said it was too negative. He does lambast corporate excess and people that think good and bad are the same as right and wrong. But the plot is interesting, the characters well developed, and emotions and dialogu well played. I loved it.

Terrific present-day social satire - yes, the ending is a bit sweet & pat, but otherwise this book absolutely nails a) the seamy side of corporate America, b) bloodsucking attorneys, c) windbag politicians, d) suburban Boston and e) aging yuppies sporting trophy kids & Blackberries. This book is a blast - loved it.

Wow! I don't really know how to classify this one but its eyecatching cover made me stop and pick it up. It's about a family with all the things they could want, but things don't hold a family together,as we find out. When Fritz Bubanker is fired from his firm and sent to jail for insider trading his family life changes for the better. Has an interesting plot twist and great flash backs of fritz's college econimic lessons.

This is a smart funny cruel book about the loathsome rich and the geek lawyers who serve them. A perfect cultural referent to early 21st century America-captures the mood post-September 11 and mid-Enron. Career-driven blackberry-sporting soulless seniorpartners, rich kids, the professional bankruptcy industry and corporate executives to whom ethics must be a vaguely distasteful foreign idea all take it on on the chin There is some silly naming (The main law firm is "Elboe, Fromme $ Athol" certain Washington characters are named after Shakespeare's Henry IV characters and the 2002 Red Sox are represented by goats) which is not distracting enough to detract from the story. This is the book Tom Wolfe must have wished he wrote. Also some good simple descriptions of how complicated financial transactions work.