MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewAt its best, the book is nicely paced, with an engaging cast of drunkards and neurotics thrown together in Citigroup’s London trading room ... What you will not learn very much about is finance ... As a novel, it wouldn’t quite cut it: The dialogue is frequently too on the nose. And the denouement of the book... isn’t exactly a nail-biter.
Rob Copeland
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewMost of The Fund doesn’t feel like a book about finance. Instead, it is about how a man of surpassing mediocrity used money to control and humiliate, and how much people abased themselves for it. Which, come to think of it, makes it one of the better books ever written about Wall Street.
Ashlee Vance
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewUnfortunately, Vance’s story loses some of its shape, branching into loosely connected sections covering Planet Labs, the satellite company that Marshall started, and three rocket-launching companies ... In some of its best sections, Vance’s book is an exuberant ride... reveling in the do-it-yourself ethos of the new space business. It may not completely reach its destination; between the narratives here, it’s not fully clear that the new industry has reached escape velocity. But Vance makes a good case that the new generation of space entrepreneurs has managed to set up the launchpad.
Andy Greenberg
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewSome of this story, in particular the dramatic takedown of the Silk Road and the capture of its creator, Ross Ulbricht, has been told before. Greenberg’s narrative differs from Nick Bilton’s American Kingpin in that it leans more heavily on the point of view of law enforcement. Greenberg has less insight into specific criminal personalities, but that lack is balanced by his level of detail and the absorbing narrative of the investigators. Each key section of the book unfolds like a compact mystery ... At the book’s close, Greenberg reaches for a bigger point, bringing back one of his protagonists, the cryptographer Sarah Meiklejohn, to point out how the tools used to catch criminals might be employed just as easily in the service of mass surveillance. It’s a reasonable concern, but relies on some slippery-slope speculation that doesn’t feel totally convincing. From the stories here, in which piecing together each set of transactions takes months of legwork and a fair dose of luck even when the targets aren’t exactly top-shelf criminal masterminds, it doesn’t seem like the age of wholesale financial surveillance is dangerously near.
