Economy of Errors: SatireWire Gives Business the Business [Paperback]

Andrew Marlatt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 2002

From the creator of SatireWire.com, the hysterical, award-winning Web site that "unite(s) The Onion and the Wall Street Journal in a marriage of pure lunacy" (Fast Company) comes a sizzling spoof of the breathless business journalism America has grown to distrust.
Through his hugely popular Web site Andrew Marlatt has hilariously skewered America’s marketing moguls, double-talking executives, and the sharky venture capitalists who seemed so omnipotent in the 1990s and so out-to-lunch in the 2000s. Now, Economy of Errors showcases Marlatt’s on-the-mark parodies of nine years of corporate kookiness and the business journalists who put their spin on it. His collection contains laugh-out-loud funny editorials, news shorts, mock Q & As, and features such as:

•AT&T Cuts Workforce by 120 Percent
•French Strike for Greater Productivity
•Friends Recall Gist of Cliffs Notes Founder
•E-toys Meets Expectations: None
•Man Continually Logs On/Off ObsessiveCompulsive.com
•Fed Drops Rates, Acid, at Policy Rave

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With a humorous take on the business of mistakes, Andrew Marlatt (an editor, writer, designer and technician at SatireWire.com) offers Economy of Errors: SatireWire Gives Business the Business. The book is a compendium of nine issues of the satirical magazine BusinessMonth Weekly. Some of the pieces are indeed funny (e.g., an article titled "Cubists Launch Unnavigable Web Site; Conceptual Realism Dominates Site No One Will Be Able to Use Anyway"); others are just plain corny (e.g., an ad proclaiming, "Business Gifts for Business People: Save Yourself with `Shoot Howard Next!' Officewear").
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An uproarious romp through the most ridiculous moments and notions inrecent business history. No chief executive, boardroom chairman or businessguru is safe from Marlatt's keen eye and lacerating wit. Yes, there will betears rolling down your cheeks when you finish. But they'll be the products of sidesplitting laughter."
-- Hartford Courant

"A loony collection of business-page parodies. If you enjoy Dilbert andDave Barry, and chuckling at businessmen, reporters and Bill Gates, buy this book. -- Montreal Gazette

"My only caveat with this book is that you really shouldn't read it before bedtime. It's just too funny, and you won't be able to stop laughing, which will stop you from getting a good night's sleep and you'll just wind up with big bags under your eyes the next morning." -- Toronto Star

"If 'Dilbert' helps you get through your business day, Economy of Errors should be good for a few weeks."
-Orlando Sentinel


"Economy of Errors is drop-dead funny! Marlatt's intelligence, wit, and razor-sharp powers of observation kept me screaming with laughter. Do yourself a favor, buy this book. Your view of current events will never be the same."
–Wendy Northcutt, author of The Darwin Awards and founder of www.DarwinAwards.com

“I loved Suck. I love The Onion. And although Andrew Marlatt chose not to call this book The Suckion, it is that smart and that funny.”
–Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century and founder of Spy and Inside.com

"Hysterically funny. Marlatt's satire tells you more about what's happening than the 'real' news. I love this book!"
–Jane Bryant Quinn, Newsweek columnist and author of Making the Most of Your Money

"If your idea of a power breakfast is scarfing down a bagel as you synchronize your PDA with the latest orange juice futures, Economy of Errors is not just for you, it’s about you. But for the rest of us, Andrew Marlatt restores our faith in the exquisite oxymoron 'funny business.'"–Michael J. Rosen, editor of the humor biennial, Mirth of a Nation.

"Simply one of the funniest books I've ever read. Economy of Errors takes a Swiftian approach to (surprise!) satirizing the online world, the offline world, and any world in between. The stories are great because they make me lose weight with belly laughter while bringing the sheer magnitude of the events into human focus."–Jeff "Hemos" Bates, cofounder of Slashdot.org

"With so many hilarious business stories in one book, I can now cancel my subscription to Forbes."–Andy Borowitz, humorist, The New Yorker and the New York Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (June 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767908872
• ISBN-13: 978-0767908870
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,597,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll be fighting over this one, June 14, 2002

By 

"nattydresser_6" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Economy of Errors: SatireWire Gives Business the Business (Paperback)

From what I've seen and read lately, there are two big guns in news satire or humorous news: The Onion and SatireWire. I own all three Onion books, (one and three were great, the second one was funny, but kind of slapped together), and bought Economy of Errors the other day, hoping it was just as good as their rival's. That's a tall order for anyone's first book, but especially after I learned SatireWire was not a "they," but just one guy.

So, I got the book, flipped to a random page, "Girlfriend Announces Disappointing Q2 Results," and after about 30 seconds I was doubled over. My roommate came over, and all I could say was "Read this! Read this!" before spluttering off for some water. Since then we've been fighting over it.

What I love about it is not just that it's hilarious, but it skewers something that never really gets hit hard enough: business. Okay, lately people have been making fun of Enron and Andersen and a few others, but this book digs at everybody from Microsoft to Adam Smith to the hidden desires of CEOs (the story about CEO dream dates is classic, maybe even beyond classic). More amazing to me is that it's both hysterical and historical, it kind of walks you through the new economy right thru to today's post-new economy.

Today, because I just read it, my favorite is one that takes on high-tech hype. Called "IBM Has Smaller Chips; AMD Has Smaller Employees," it begins: "In response to IBM's statement that it will produce transistors only .20 microns across, rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices announced today that most of its employees are no more than 14 inches tall. AMD, however, refused to allow reporters into its facilities to verify the claim. "We would, but we can't reach the doorknobs," spokesman Ravi Chalani said in a phone interview."

The Onion guys are great, but as I'm reading this, I'd have to say Andrew Marlatt is the funniest writer in America.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A business classic, June 27, 2002

By 

"kelli_abro" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Economy of Errors: SatireWire Gives Business the Business (Paperback)

I'm giving this baby five stars, but I should say it's probably not for people over, say, age 60 who don't know or haven't followed much the world of business in the last 10 years. For everyone else, this book is an absolute classic, and probably the funniest thing I have read in years.

I've read a few places where people say Economy of Errors is funnier than Dilbert, but it's not like Dilbert at all. Dilbert is a one-off running joke. This book has a little of everything: funny images, funny illustrations, and hundreds of stories that quite literally have had people around the office fighting over it. (Yes, even to take to the bathroom.)

Certainly it's Onionesque in parts, with some great headlines ("Survey: Majority Of Web Users Are FBI Agents Posing As Teenage Girls"), but it's much more in-depth, and more memorable because of it. I will never forget reading about "employee slapping" policies, or how Toys R Us, long known for its distinctive backwards R, decided to turn around its T and its U as well to get three times the brand recognition.

My only advice is, don't loan the book out. Make people get their own.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstandingly funny and even poignant, June 11, 2002

By 

John Pelone (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Economy of Errors: SatireWire Gives Business the Business (Paperback)

I was surprised when I read this because I really thought The Onion was the only place that did this kind of thing. But this book is great. The style is different, much more featurey in some parts, and almost Pythonesque in others.

It's also different in that while the headlines themselves are funny, e.g., "Chrysler Recalls Ford Minivans" or "Shooting at Virtual Office Leaves 3 As Good As Dead, 6 Tantamount to Wounded"), the stories get even funnier as they go on. And while it's absurd, it's definitely a history of the New Economy with stories about the beginnings of Netscape, the mad dotcom rush, the horrible fall from grace (including a story about refugee camps set up for dotcommers where the refs from AltaVista turned out to be particularly useless: "We sent them out for sticks to make a fire, and they came back with Thai sticks, Stickley furniture, and Old Styx albums.")

I know these guys (Satirewire) have a web site, but their stuff was made for print. It's just hysterically funny stuff.