Andy Kessler's "Wall Street Meat" is a breeze of a read: an often funny (sometimes hilarious) series of anecdotes that combine to provide an insightful, critical look at the workings of Wall Street and the technology capital markets of the 1990s.

Kessler recounts his days on Wall Street, starting as fresh-scrubbed engineer who stumbles onto the Street almost by accident, to his departure and subsequent career investing in and writing about technology from Silicon Valley. He had the good fortune to learn the ropes from an old school traditionalist, which allowed him both to be successful in the old fashioned sense (achieving a top analyst ranking, as determined by clients) and to understand the transition that happened in the 1990s, as analysts became more involved in investment banking and, in many cases, lost their bearings in the telecom/Internet boom and bust markets (Jack Grubman being the penultimate example).

What makes Kessler's book so powerful is that he calls it as he sees it, from his objective, fundamentally grounded insider's viewpoint. He's made enough money, he's happy in his career, and he cares deeply about the future of Wall Street, so he's not out to perform character assassination; he truly wants to point out what went wrong (and does so in a very entertaining fashion) and make suggestions for reform. He doesn't put much weight in additional regulations and prosecutions, believing that reputation is a more effective mechanism for ensuring proper behavior over the long term. Rather, Kessler pushes structural economic reforms such as a "synthetic Goldman Sachs" in which stock research could be performed by truly independent, stand-alone entities (TheStreet.com isn't there yet, according to Kessler), and ending IPO lockups, to eliminate the huge post-IPO pops that happened during the boom and which led to such a frenzy of deal making. The Dutch auction method for allocating and pricing IPO shares, which Google is using during its upcoming IPO, could also eliminate this problem.

WSM is a must read for Wall Streeters, and people involved in the financing of technology companies. Individual investors (especially tech stock investors) would benefit greatly from reading WSM, to learn Kessler's cautionary tale of how the Street really worked during the boom, and what perversions remain.

This book was pretty poorly written and fraught with annoying typos - but, nonetheless, a fun read for us outsiders who have only heard names like Jack Grubman and Frank Quattrone rather recently. There must have been a push to get this book out while it was still timely - it could have been brilliant with a little more time and effort, but if nothing else, it kept me entertained and enabled me to have more interesting (at least in my own mind) conversations with the financial types.

This is a funny and insightful book. It may seem like a bunch of breezy anecdotes told cleverly about some big name Wall Street names, and it has plenty of those, but it is much more than that. This is a book that should be read by everyone interested in Wall Street, who has money invested there, or is thinking about putting money there, and any MBA interested in finance. Mr. Kessler worked on Wall Street for many years as an analyst for Paine Webber and then Morgan Stanley. Later, he left to work as a portfolio manager at Velocity Capital Management, which means he was and is still working with the same folks, but now as an investor.

His stories, escapades, and perspectives will lift the veil for those still innocent enough to believe that salesmen and account managers for the big trading houses have their clients' best interest at heart. I know we learned in b-school about the Random Walk, and arbitrage theory. All of that and the other stuff we learned is important to know. However, more valuable are the real world insights he provides about the structural changes and unintended consequences of the Small Order Execution System and its effect on liquidity and price volatility, Sarbanes-Oxley and the closing off of information to investors, ECNs and the erosion of trading income and the change to emphasis on fees and deals to provide income, momentum investing (momos), and more.

I am also very glad that he does not let individual investors off the hook for their own foolishness with their retirement and investment income. Remember, the greater fool theory cannot work without new people volunteering for the job. In the afterword the author also briefly demonstrates why all of the popular theories for the bubble and its popping are all true and none true. All contributed, but none we alone sufficient. Like most disasters, the likely cause is a confluence of little events combined into something no one much caused or could stop.

There is an obvious comparison to Michael Lewis's wonderful "Liar's Poker" and I would recommend this book just as highly. Mr. Kessler's career spanned a long enough time to chronicle the change from his being afraid to recommend a stock that could drop in price to Henry Blodget being afraid to downgrade a stock that could still go up in price. An amazing journey indeed and we are the better for his having chronicled it for us in such an entertaining way.

A sad book by an even sadder man who for all his protestations is clearly bitter that he didn't make out like the ones in the book's sub title that we all have heard of (unlike him). Throughout the book he keeps trying to show how he was one of that elite bunch of names (idiots though they may be) and yet he disparges them throughout. If that isn't a bitter wannabe I don't know what is. No meat in this book at all unfortuantely, just sour grapes...and a hell of a lot of typos. I guess whoever was charged with proof reading the thing fell asleep with regularity!

Mr. Kessler has an interesting take on Wall Street in his first book, Wall Street Meat; the personalities, the firms and the technology boom of the 90's. As a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal's opinion page, he has built a reputation of providing unique and interesting insight at Wall Street and technology companies. His approach includes anecdotal evidence that are both interesting and funny, yet sad and telling. One could compare them to both P. J. O'Roarke and Michael Lewis.
While early chapters tend to tell stories regarding the people and situations he finds, the conclusion discusses the conflicts and motivations of those people and is right on the money. As a Wall Street veteran of 20 years now living on the West Coast, Mr. Kessler's work reminds me of the whirlwind tour that technology investing has been. Keep up the good work, and I can't wait to see the sequel mentioned in the back of the book.