You Will Make Money in Your Sleep: The Story of Dana ...

No Nostalgia:
I always wondered what happened when the dudes at subpop started rolling in cash after Nirvana broke. When you are so NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, and suddenly you are wallowing in it. I had no idea that the indie execs were sucked into a larger scam by a fame-obsessed scammer to the stars. Great storytelling and great stripped down prose. Keeps you from getting too nostalgic.

I Can't Believe I Read This!:
White's story is about Dana Giacchetto, con man to the stars. What is particularly startling about this book is that the author's husband lost $80,000 (out of $100,000) to Dana, yet she began work on the book in collaboration with Dana. (Eventually Dana stopped cooperating.) Dana began targeting the arts community (he had tried his hand in the area) after first working in a bank, reading Warren Buffett,and starting a band. Supposedly (per the SEC) about $20 million disappeared through Dana's activities. These were simply writing checks on Account A to deposit into Account DG (Dana Giacchetto's). Investments were made - eg. Blue Chips such as Coca-Cola (ala Buffett), Texas water companies, and Motorola's Iridium (a satellite phone communications venture that went nowhere). Overall, however, they did not earn the returns Dan promised, nor cover the costs of his lifestyle. Bottom Line: You won't learn any salacious (or otherwise) gossip about the stars in this book, not even any specifics about how Dana ran his con game.

I grew up with Russell and Dana in Medford:
This book talks about a Medford, MA that I never knew. Dana's house was not a depressing place in a depressing city. It was fun for a kid. A pool, a pond and lots of fun chasing "Ceasar" and the other geese around the back yard and fishing in the pond. Drugs were not everywhere. Dana found them because he was looking for them. He had a 3 man band that played some good music. Over 20 years later I remember two songs they played a lot...Edge of a Cliff and Right Angle. Seems like Dana was dancing on a cliff and looking for the right angle in life. Medford was/is a great place. Dana always was eccentric and it was best for him to get out of the quiet family based community that was Medford. Like many of my friends and neighbors I also graduated from Medford High School and went on to college despite how terrible a place it seemed to be from Emily's description. I know you had to sell books but much like Dana...it is pretty laughable. His parents were always kind and generous and his younger brother Russell, my friend, was a good kid with a lot of energy...I would have liked to have read more of the truth about Medford and what a welcoming place 39 Winford Way was for me and Russell's other friends...I wish the entire family well.

a guided tour of a crazy, alien world:
This is not the sort of book I would typically read. I had never heard of Dana Giacchetto and could care less about his world of decadent wealth and "A-list" people. But I do know the author and her husband and some of the people mentioned in the story, so for that reason it interested me and I ended up reading the whole thing in a weekend. (It also resonated with my own family history; my grandfather was a charming, lovable sociopath who went to prison for fraud.) One reviewer here criticizes the book for not being objective, but the author's direct personal involvement is precisely what pulled me into the story and held me there. White's first-hand experience guides the reader into a world that most of us will never know, making both the excitement and the anxiety palpable. She was at once friend and victim of her subject, and the tension between those two poles - her efforts to reconcile her positive feelings for him against her negative experience - kept me engaged. I found her ability to tell the story with both compassion and anger remarkable, the thing that takes this beyond being just another true crime exposé or scathing portrait of a greedy jerk. There is genuine feeling behind the facts, and for me this is far more compelling than (supposedly) "objective" reportage. Another reviewer complained that the book paints a negative portrait of Medford and of Giacchetto's family. As someone outside of that community, I did not feel the town was portrayed in a particularly bad light, and in fact some of the neighborhood "fun" of suburbia in the 60s comes through. But as David Lynch has shown us, the 'burbs have their dark side and White was right to acknowledge that. She clearly cares about the family and appreciates their eccentricities without denying their problems. Some of their essentially harmless quirks - the father's grandiosity and embellishment of reality, the mother's love of gambling and deal-making, their occasional reckless spending in order to impress others - resurface in their son in a more sinister form. And I was fascinated by the good boy/bad boy contrast between the golden boy Dana and his petty criminal brother that is woven throughout the book. It's a reminder that people are far more complex and multi-layered than we realize, that outward appearances tell only a small part of their story. It's easy to look back on such scenarios or to read about them second-hand and see all the red flags, to wonder how these otherwise intelligent people were taken in by someone so obviously not trustworthy. But real life isn't that simple. There are all kinds of factors that color our perception of any given situation or person, and plenty of delusion to go around. It takes a certain amount of guts to not only admit you were taken in, but to also make all of the gory details public, and to do so with a fair amount of sympathy and humor. I admire White's courage in telling her/Giacchetto's story without demonizing her subject or spinning it as a simplistic tale of Bad Person/Poor Victims.

Fascinating topic, dissappointing book:
The author (who lost what was a substantial sum of money relative to her not-so-large net worth) of this book is too close to the subject for it to be considered even remotely objective. Throughout the book, there were continual reminders that this book was written with too much passion and not enough solid research. The book demonstrated only the most elementary understanding of investments, risks, and returns - and, while focusing on one player (Giacchetto) who was probably a bad apple, did not explore the supporting cast of advisors, lawyers, and banks that enabled him to be successful. Instead, the author chose an extended exploration of the flaws of Giacchetto's family - certainly somewhat relevant in explaining his actions but not deserving of the degree of focus and emotion it received.