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| The Spam Letters | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Land
Publisher: No Starch Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $0.01
You Save: $14.94 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (14 reviews)
Sales Rank: 866846
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 1593270321
Dewey Decimal Number: 816.6
EAN: 9781593270322
ASIN: 1593270321
Publication Date: June 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
From the man behind TheSpamLetters.com - featured in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, and Slashdot - comes a collection of brilliant and entertaining correspondence with the people who send out mass junk emailings (a.k.a. spam). Compiled from the nearly 200 entries written by Jonathan Land, The Spam Letters taunts, prods, and parodies the faceless salespeople in your inbox, giving you a chuckle at their expense. If you hate spam, you'll love The Spam Letters.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Funny funny funny December 12, 2004
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ah, sweet revenge. His letters made me laugh so hard and I can't help but wonder what the person on the other end was thinking when they read them (if they did). Hilarious, a must read.
 Fun reading, some much better than others October 15, 2004
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
The curse of the electronic age, SPAM eventually forces its way into the life of anyone with an email address. While there are many books and articles about how to reduce this problem, Jonathan Lund has taken his own personal war back to the spammers. Instead of just deleting the emails he responds to them. Of course he doesn't respond quite the way the spammers expect. His responses are an attempt at humor and wit that often falls short of the mark, but then again at times is absolutely hysterical.
Particularly funny is his correspondence with people who are naive enough to accept his satirical comments at face value. His correspondence with textile manufacturers and the infamous Nigerian money launderer is brilliant.
With writing that covers the whole range from a poor attempt at humor to laugh-out-loud funny, to bizarre, the reader is sure to find several emails entertaining no matter what your preference in humor. The Spam Letters is a recommended read.
Experience a vicarious victory! October 3, 2004
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Have you ever wanted to "strike back" at the spammers and the con artists? If so, you'll enjoy The Spam Letters by Jonathan Land (No Starch Press). This is a funny read...
Chapter list: Introduction; Products for Prey: Part 1; Foreign Affairs: Part 1; Spam Potpourri: Part 1; A Quick Buck; Interlude: Bad Impressions; Products for Prey: Part 2; Foreign Affairs: Part 2: Nigerian Scam Artists; Sex Sells; Spam Potpourri: Part 2; Warning/Disclaimer: Do Not Try This At Home
This isn't a book that is going to give you any technical insights or strategies for dealing with spam. Actually, it *will* give you a strategy... yank their chains... HARD!. Land has taken various spam emails he's received (or that have been forwarded to him by co-conspirators) and let his warped creative writing skills loose. Some of his efforts were more for his own benefit, as it was obvious that the return address was not going anywhere that was real. But his real classics were with real emails who decided to scam or spam the wrong person. His exchange with the fabric wholesaler in the middle east is funny. The series with the stainless steel broker is just plausible enough to be real (and the broker played along well). The best efforts were reserved for the Nigerian scam artists. His scenarios of playing off scammers against each other, asking for bigger cuts, and playing the role of both financial advisor and committed asylum patient gives any reader who has received one of these emails a vicarious thrill.
This is an excellent recreational read, but I probably shouldn't have opened it. I'm just warped enough to think I could do this too... :-)
This should be required reading. October 1, 2004
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is one of those books that everyone should read - so that we can all vicariously through Jon Land's dive into the land of spammers... and in agreement with others - catching him on NPR is more than a treat - its an addiction waiting to happen (think chocolate).
For the geek and for the not-so-geekish, this book serves as a living history of the frustrations we all have felt when dealing with SPAM. Mr. Land just found a great way give some of that frustration back to the SPAMMERS - and to give us geeks something to chuckle about when reading about V|AGRA or the fortunes that await us in Nigeria... and we can take comfort in knowing that we're not alone in out frustrations.
Thank you, Jon!
Perfect gift for the serious computer geek September 8, 2004
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Author Jonathan Land actually has running dialogs with spam writers, published in such prestigious places as New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, so it's not surprising The Spam Letters provides such a delightful package bringing all the dialogs to one place, under one cover. Land's favorite exchanges with spammers are a laugh a moment- and all too real - making The Spam Letters that perfect gift for the serious computer geek who 'has everything' but too much humor.
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