Reads like a thriller as it investigates the birth and growth of this shadowy and sprawling industry that polished up door-to-door sales with a new veneer of all-American entrepreneurialism ... Read masterfully illuminates the tricks and sleights of hand that in multilevel marketing are simply the rules of doing business ... An almost prosecutorial case against many multilevel marketing schemes ... Read captures... heartache.
Gripping and instructive ... More about the scammers and their stratagems than it is about the scammed. Even by the end of the book, it remains somewhat difficult to fathom why so many people are taken in by what seems like such an obvious grift ... Nonetheless, the history Read recounts allows readers to infer how MLM might win over adherents ... A vivid portrait.
Engaging ... Exposes some awkward truths about the nature of American work ... Weaving in sympathetic portrayals of women who lost money and friends after working with MLM schemes, she recasts them as victims of a multigenerational swindle ... Read writes with scorn about the industry’s early architects...But she never disparages her sources, whose stories of drained bank accounts and dashed dreams she portrays only with empathy ... These vignettes keep the human toll of the schemes top of mind ... Read’s indictment of MLM outfits is predictable enough, but her research also reveals how much corporate America has in common with this shady economy, which has long been dismissed as a kooky sideshow ... Read ably explains why these businesses have appealed to generations of underpaid and insecure American workers ... Read names the leaders who benefit, and in doing so, she delivers a damning portrait of those who take advantage—and she humanizes the people they rip off. Investigating an industry notorious for doublespeak and euphemism, she calls things what they are.
Read’s book is a huge addition to the mix, expertly and carefully walking readers through the history of MLMs and revealing them for what they really are: maybe not so much scams as predatory businesses in the vein of payday lenders, for-profit colleges, and international labor brokers. MLMs have too long operated in the dark, but, for all the light it sheds, Read’s book makes you wonder if the industry has simply grown too large and too powerful to regulate or reform.
