This book is a winner, plain and simple. Yes, it is long (530 pages) and sometimes got into a little too much detail (I certainly didn’t sign up for three chapters devoted to Larry’s boating adventures) but on the whole this is a great read. Symonds was given tremendous access to Ellison and Oracle execs in return for Ellison to have the final word. After Symonds wrote the book, Ellison footnoted certain sentences every other page or so to clarify, deny, or elaborate on a point. This technique makes Ellison come off in a good light. For anyone involved in the software world, Symonds does a good job at explaining the issues Oracle faces (and any enterprise software company for that matter) and describes Ellison’s thinking behind each.