Journalist Michael Wolff is a recognised pioneer in the business of cyberspace who has been developing products and services for the online world since the dark ages of 1994. During the following years however, not all the activities he engaged in nor all the people he dealt with left a pleasant taste in his mouth—although his cumulative adventures certainly have been very lucrative. In Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet Wolff pulls few punches as he candidly and methodically recounts the single steps forward and multiple steps back that marked his experiences while trying to transform a fledgling print media enterprise into a towering New Media colossus. After developing a series of "NetGuide" books that proved highly successful he attempted to transfer the concept to a variety of online offshoots and in the process collaborating with Wired magazine, Time-Warner's Pathfinder, the late Robert Maxwell's media empire, AOL, assorted venture capitalists, sundry competitors and numerous would-be partners. Burn Rate is a fascinating tale that might best be characterised by the old adage that warns us to "be careful what we wish for, for we just might get it". —Howard Rothman