Toy Monster Review in the TLS

THE latest (Sept 4) issue of the Times Literary Supplement just arrived in my mailbox, and in it is my review of Jerry Oppenheimer's Toy Monster: The big, bad world of Mattel.

Naturally, if the subject is of any interest to you, I'd recommend buying a copy of the TLS and reading the full review. But to put my take on it in a very compact nutshell, Toy Monster is a brisk, hyperbolic, muckraking, often infuriating read. Infuriating on account of Oppenheimer's sensationalist, self-indulgent style, not to mention the ego and gall and excess of some of the execs he profiles. The mixed reviews on Amazon.com (linked above) would suggest that readers' opinions of the book are determined by which of those two they dislike more.