As a professor of managerial economics at the University of Texas at Dallas, Liebowitz comes armed to slaughter the sacred cows of the Internet boom—he makes quick work of economic theories like lock-in and first-mover advantage that made companies like Webvan seem like a good idea at the time.

While he softens the blow by admitting that he too took a beating in the dot-com delirium, his prose—well argued, if unadorned—takes no prisoners. After skewering the authors of Information Rules for hedging their bets about the business advantages of being first, he observes, "Still, for a business audience that finds sufficiently deep meaning in books such as Who Moved My Cheese? to keep it on the bestseller list for years, these nuances are likely to be unnoticed." Count Kevin Kelly and Mary Meeker among the targets of his subtle scorn.

There's much to be learned here, but it's hard not to think how much more welcome this book would have been five years ago.

Ironically, the book's strength is its weakness—Liebowitz, fittingly for an academic, focuses on economic analysis at the expense of intertwined social and political considerations. The result is a chapter about copyright and the Internet that argues the financial merits of digital rights management while ignoring its impact on the open source movement and on personal freedom. Still, Re-Thinking the Network Economy will enlighten investors and managers alike.

—Thomas Claburn