Twenty-one Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon.com

By Mike Daisey

A Michael Moore for the Dot.com generation, ‘21 Dog Years’ is Mike Daisey’s wickedly funny story of life in the New Economy trenches.

In 1998, when Amazon.com went to temp agencies to recruit people, they gave them a simple directive: send us your freaks. Thus began Mike Daisey’s love affair with the world’s biggest bookstore.

Mike Daisey worked at Amazon.com for nearly three years during the dot-com frenzy of the late nineties. Now that his nondisclosure agreement has expired, he can tell the real story of tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, Albanian economics, venture capitalism that feed into the delusional cocktail exulted as the New Economy.

His ascent from lowly temp to customer service representative to business development hustler is the stuff of dreams – and nightmares. No wonder Newsweek has dubbed Daisey the ‘oracle of the bust.’

With a hugely popular website mikedaisey.com and a hit one-man show that has received phenomenal coverage (with stories in Wired, Daily Mail, Salon, Guardian and elsewhere), Michael Daisey has been called the first dot.comic and the Michael Moore of the net generation.

Format: Paperback
Release Date: 01 Jul 2002
Pages: 240
ISBN: 978-1-84115-765-8
At 24, Mike Daisey joined one of the leading dotcoms in the US. He left in 2000, when he was 27. He has since been been a highly-acclaimed stand up comedian, planning to come to the UK in 2002, and campaigner for the rights of dotcom workers. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn.

Review for 21 Dog Years - the performance -

”'Between Spalding Gray and Robin Williams.” - New York Post'He doesn't pull punches. Daisey…has wreaked his own brand of havoc.' Washington Post'Mike Daisey does what Michael Moore once did for General Motors.' Entertainment Weekly'Dilbert meets Spalding Gray. Hilarity ensues.' Business 2.0'We haven't seen the show, but we hear it's quite funny.' Patty Smith, Amazon spokesperson'It was like, what's next…locusts?' Jeff Bezos, Newsweek