The Price of Experience: Money, Power, Image, and Murder in Los Angeles

Before reading The Price of Experience, I had seen television documentaries/docu-dramas and read a primer on the topic. But if you don't know anything at all about the BBC and Joe Hunt, or you want to know a lot more, this book is all you'll ever need to read...ever!!! Sullivan goes into such great detail on every individual involved, including murdered scammers Ron Levin and Headiah Eslamenia, that the reader feels like he now knows each of them personally and could talk about them at great length with anyone. Buy this book because if you don't, you'll merely waste gas driving to the library to borrow it again and again. A modern true crime masterpiece! Both an engrossing narritive and an exhaustive reference book on the Billionaire Boys Club case all at the same time. An off the charts winner. You won't be sorry.

How this book has failed to be recognized as a masterpiece is beyond me. The Price of Experience is an astounding accomplishment. The only other true crime books that can even bear comparison to it are In Cold Blood and the first half of The Executioner's Song. In fact, it denigrates The Price of Experience to classify it as simply a true crime book. Sullivan's rendition of Los Angeles in the 1980s provides the most vivid and memorable images of both the time and the place that I have ever found on the printed page. And his portrait of Joe Hunt is the the most compelling and insightful depiction of evil as a series of decisions--a process--that I can recall in contemporary literature. The characters ALL are exquisitely drawn and Ron Levin ranks among the most amusing miscreants ever captured in print. The Price of Experience deserves to remain in print for years to come and to appear on college syllabuses across the country.

An absolute masterpiece. Unbelievably researched and beautifully written. It's a shame this book never caught the public eye, obviously because the BBC was such a dated subject at the time of publication. There is not a single tome in my entire collection that has brought me as much pleasure and insight. Far more than a mere true crime book, this epic is a stunning cultural history of Los Angeles. In fact, stating that "The Price of Experience" is merely a true crime book is like saying THE GODFATHER is merely a gangster film. Almost everyone I know that has read it agrees it is the finest non-fiction book ever written.

This is one of the great overlooked books of the 90's. It was overlooked, I believe, because of its length and the timing of its release: over a decade after its subjects, Joe Hunt and the Billionaire Boys Club, were in the media spotlight. What a shame because it a flat out masterpiece. As far as true crime books go this is a landmark and the top of the heap. Not only is it incredibly researched and hard to put down, but it is an amazing cultural history of Los Angeles and its reflection of America during the Reagan era. Out of the hundreds of books I have read concerning Los Angeles and American society and culture in general, none depicts so well out obsession with power, money, and image as Sullivan's book does. A hundred years from now I hope it will be read in American Studies, History, and English classes in universities along with such thematically similar books as The Great Gatsby, Sister Carrie, Davis' City of Quartz, Ellroy's LA Quartet and such films as The Godfather, Goodfellas, Chinatown, Mean Streets, LA Confidential, and American Beauty. Let's hope it stays in print. Read this classic.

This was one of the most engrossing books I've ever read. The story of a brilliant, highly principalled, amoral, ambitous, and effective person.The story of how he acted as his own lawyer and got himself off of murder was utterly fascinating. The story of someone who you could imagine could do anything he set his mind to. Absolutely anything. He is really a fascinating character, and if you think about success or ambition, I am sure you will find this a facinating tale.