Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars

Reading Typo is a lot like watching a disaster movie. You see the oncoming train, you hear the oncoming train, and the narrator doesn't know he's tied to the train tracks. There's no possibility of rescue, and you can't look away. The charts at the beginning of each chapter, which showed the rise and (mostly) fall of revenue and the author's net worth, were particularly amusing. The business narrative of an industry that needs to change and can't is also fascinating.

Typo does a superb job of relating the trials related to taking over an existing business and attempting to reform its operations. Within the context of David Silverman's personal narrative, you get to experience all of the confusion, anxiety and heart ache of trying to keep a business afloat under the pressures of outsourcing and managerial strife. As a former business student and someone who has been involved with various start up companies, similar in many ways to the Clarinda typesetting company at the heart of this story, I strongly recommend that anyone who is interested in entrepreneurship or business management read this book. You can step away with valuable lessons without having to go through the unfortunate consequences that come from first hand experience.

For a book that gives you the overall plot in the title, I found this book fascinating. I was riveted to the story, the people and to the journey itself. I have read few fictional books that I cared this much about. Could this really be a business memoir? It is indeed. It is a business memoir like no other. It's funny, even when the chips are down it still manages to be funny. The only thing I find more impressive than the humor and style with which the book was written is the unforgiving honesty about what is occurring. It is a roller coaster of emotion as you hope (like the author did) for success. After reading Typo, I now feel like have experienced running my own company. Even ending in failure, this book inspires me even more to try my own hand at it.

This book is not about how to succeed or how to fail. It's about the nature of humanity and the nature of the Universe. Things change while they stay the same. A man stays the same as the world around him changes, and he is lost. A business stays the same as the industry changes, and it is lost. This book will make you question your assumptions and even your principles, not because they are inherently wrong but because they are not always right... they can be left behind in the wake of global trends. In this book you will see foolish heros and heroic fools, and nobody is ever perfect. And then when you get to the end, and you think you've got this hard, miserable world figured out, you will hear a story of redemption, a whispered hint of what it could mean to believe in something that never changes.

It's rare to find a true business tale that reads like a novel AND is insightful without being preachy. The story is riveting and gives insight to the nuts and bolts of taking over a company that most investors and even many managers are oblivious to. I don't see how a happy ending could have ever been possible for this story but David Silverman bares his soul with wit and grace. If you're thinking of starting or buying a company or partnering with or lending money to someone who is, you should read this book.