Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

An engrossing microcosm of the internet's Wild West years, based on an ugly conflict between two eccentric innovators of online dating and pornography.Rolling Stone contributing editor Kushner (Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of DD, 2017, etc.) delivers another digestible look at transformations spurred by unpredictable technologies, turning the dry topic of domain-name battles into a lively representation of the era's hype, confusion, and outsized personalities. He writes about "an epic rivalry that established many of the rules that enable electronic commerce today.The war for Sex.com represents an essential, but overlooked, chapter behind one of the greatest inventions of our time: the internet." The story revolves around two oppositional yet strangely similar figures: Gary Kremen, an unkempt computer innovator whose keen sense of what was next was embodied by his founding of the dating site Match.com, and Stephen Michael Cohen, a con artist, libertine, and tech enthusiast who developed the first sex-oriented bulletin board system in the early 1980s. Cohen was in prison in 1994, as Kremen was developing Match.com and, presciently, registering domain names based on perceiving their future profitability: "His plan was simple, to register each and every category of classified ads online." Later, Cohen also took the Sex.com address, via forged paperwork, seeing its lucrative potential. The mercurial Kremen was astonished to discover the theft in the wake of his emotionally devastating ouster by the Match.com board. "Kremen didn't know why or how Cohen had obtained what was rightfully his," writes the author. This led to a complex, increasingly bitter legal battle. Kushner constructs this labyrinthine tale clearly, focusing on the experiences and outlooks of both Kremen and Cohen and chronicling his discussions with associates and early industry observers. He keeps it compelling by emphasizing the high stakes of their struggle for what the internet has since become, though the narrative sometimes meanders and finally seems anticlimactic.An easily consumed, worthwhile addition to the literature reconstructing how the online world has become both profitable and pervasive. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

The internet's early days are often compared to the Wild West, with websites popping up like homesteading claims almost daily wherever new businesses marked their property lines with dot-com domain names. Award-winning journalist Kushner (Alligator Candy, 2016) revisits this tumultuous period by recounting a quirky episode of website tug-of-war between two of the digital world's most colorful pioneers. The stars here are match.com founder Gary Kremen, one of the first Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to foresee the money-making potential of online dating, and Stephen Michael Cohen, a veteran con artist who stole the rights to sex.com from Kremen, making millions in the process. Kremen's media-titillating lawsuit against Cohen began in 1994 and, through many absurd twists and turns, didn't end until 2005 when Kremen won a $65 million judgment and moved into Cohen's Santa Fe mansion. Interspersed between the legal battle's more salacious episodes, Kushner provides some informative background about fledgling online companies like Mosaic and Napster and gives his readers a greater appreciation for the relative dependability and steadiness of today's internet.--Carl Hays Copyright 2019 Booklist

Library Journal
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Kushner (Alligator Candy) portrays the 1990s as the Internet's "Wild West" era, and here offers a fun, raunchy romp through the burgeoning online porn industry, which at the time totaled 35 percent of all Internet traffic. This is more than a smut-filled tell-all, as it relates the story of two ruthless men who early on realized that fortunes were to be made in online porn. It focuses on Gary Kremen, who created match.com in 1993, and Stephen Cohen, who served time in prison for bankruptcy fraud, and their fight over the rights to the sex.com domain. Advertisers would pay $1 million a month to promote their sites on sex.com, since people interested in porn would begin their searches there. The battle between Kremen and Cohen played out in federal courts, setting the precedent of establishing online domain sites as personal property. Kushner shows how destroying each other became their obsession. VERDICT Readers intrigued by the Internet's history and the laws that govern it will breeze through this sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always revealing narrative. See also Evan Ratliff's The Mastermind.-Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly
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Journalist Kushner (Alligator Candy) delivers a surprising, cockeyed history of the internet's early days through the entangled stories of two of its early innovators: Gary Kremen, "the father of online dating" and founder of Match.com, and Stephen Michael Cohen, an internet visionary, pornographer, and con man. Their precedent-setting battle over a single highly lucrative domain name, Sex.com, began in 1994 and involved absurdist legal proceedings-Cohen showed up to one deposition with his glasses broken so he could not read any documents placed before him-and Kremen's road trip through Mexico to prepare for seizing Cohen's assets there, which proved to encompass both a seedy Tijuana strip club and a shrimp farm in a bucolic small village. Interspersed between these exploits, Kushner adds historical context about the development of online culture during the 1990s. Brief vignettes describe key moments in internet history, such as the launch of Mosaic, the first popular web browser, and the advent of rampant file sharing through Napster and similar sites. Kushner thus delivers a truly unexpected history of the internet and its growing impact on everyone's lives. Forgoing dry tech-speak, Kushner delivers a fast-paced, raunchy tale of sex, drugs, and dial-up. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.