Like Polsky’s first memoir (“I Bought Andy Warhol“), this book consists mostly of anecdotes about the world of contemporary art. During the time covered in this volume, Polsky made the transition from dealer to “art financial advisor”. Consequently, it’s more about dollars than art, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless, albeit a little impersonal compared to his first book.
It was interesting to read this book, which is about cyber warfare apparently waged by China, during the week that Google made it’s allegation against China about attempts to penetrate Google’s systems. Note that I said “apparently”, which is a bit of a spoiler but the real culprit is telegraphed so early in the book that I’m not spoiling much of a surprise. (So if fictional culprits can make an attack look like it came from China, couldn’t real attackers do the same thing?)
Clarke, a former senior White House advisor to three presidents, uses fiction to make a convincing case that the US infrastructure is very vulnerable to technological attacks. His protagonists are plausible, his villains two-dimensional, and his thriller-writing workmanlike.
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