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

David Silverman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 21, 2007

Two months before David Silverman’s 32nd birthday, he visited the Charles Schwab branch in the basement of the World Trade Center to wire his father’s life savings towards the purchase of the Clarinda Typesetting company in Clarinda, Iowa. Typo tells the true story of the Clarinda company’s last rise and fall — and with it one entrepreneur’s story of what it means to take on, run, and ultimately lose an entire life’s work. This book is an American dream run aground, told with humor despite moments of tragedy. The story reveals the impact of losing part of an entire industry and answers questions about how that impacts American business. The reader sees in Clarinda’s fate the potential peril faced by every company, and the lessons learned are applicable to anyone who wants to run his or her own business, succeed in a large corporation, and not be stranded by the reality of shifting markets, outsourcing, and, ultimately, capitalism itself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Typo, a memoir about buying a typesetting company, is amusing, appalling, infuriating and wonderfully written." -- The Wall Street Journal

"His beautifully written memoir avoids no details about the realities of managing people... [and] brings the `global' issue of globalization to an all-too-human level." -- Tom Ehrenfeld former editor at Harvard Business Review and Inc. Magazine

"It is absolutely brilliant. Everyone in the publishing business should read it and most people in any sort of business should too." -- Richard Charkin, CEO Macmillan UK

"This is what we would try to teach our MBA students-but we lack Mr. Silverman's sense of humor and timing." -- Professor Robert Bloomfield, Cornell University Johnson School of Management's Director of Graduate Studies

"What really makes this book is the often entertaining picture it paints of the tribulations of trying to run a business. ... It is no wonder that at least one business school is making it mandatory reading for anyone considering starting their own business." -- The Independent

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (June 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933368659
• ISBN-13: 978-1933368658
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,015,293 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good read, but the author takes it too easy on himself, August 31, 2008

By 

autumn-ajax "autumn-ajax" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars (Paperback)

The book certainly held my interest, and I enjoyed reading it. The blow-by-blow story of how an American company is crushed by industry forces (in this case, failing to adapt to low wage off-shoring competition) is compelling.

And yet, after finishing the book, the more I reflected on it, the less I liked it, and the less comfortable I felt with the author. One the plus side, he comes across as being forthright, and I give him props for baring his soul about how his company failed under his watch. Not many people would do that.

At the same time, Silverman did not seem to have much respect or empathy for his employees. He goes out of his way to make derogatory comments about their appearance or habits. The whole state of Iowa is portrayed as a grotesque backwater ... there are gratuitous digs taken against other locations ... indeed, if I recall correctly, no place away from the East Coast gets his respect. And that actually doesn't bother me much, except, that (i) I'm not sure that Silverman ever reconciles his utter failure to reach his employees with his lack of appreciation for them, and (ii) who in their right mind would buy a company in small-town Iowa and expect it to be driven by hard-charging cutting-edge types? That's not a knock on Iowa; the hard truth is that in small towns, opportunities are limited, so many ambitious, intelligent people leave, setting up a negative cycle where it's hard to start a new business because the labor pool isn't right.

Beyond that, there's a little too much of a victim mentality in the book, as if the company would have been fine if Fortuna hadn't thrown all these cataclysms into its way. And yet, the challenges the company faced were fairly prosaic: competition, unscrupulous salesmen, customers who backed out of contracts, employees who were incompetent, obstructionist, and/or resistant to change. Significant challenges to be sure, but ones that should have been expected all along.

There appears to be an element of axe-grinding in this book, which makes me treat it cautiously. That's understandable; as Silverman says, he lost his life savings, his father's life savings, and his father and friend passed away during that time.

Finally, I agree with a previous reviewer: the subtitle is misleading, as Clarinda was not the last American typesetting company, and the obfuscation of the name of Silverman's previous company is curious; it at least should have been explained.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It looks at business as it is, not how we learned it in school., July 10, 2007

By 

Craig McLeod (Vail, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars (Paperback)

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Is What It Is, June 21, 2007

By 

Donald Zirilli (Tranquility, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars (Paperback)

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.