An interesting book and a quick-read, but this is unbelievably repetitive. It felt like half of this book was just rehashing the same arguments over and over again. ( )

From start to finish this book was a wild ride. Not only did it discuss the birth of Blockbuster and its inevitable downfall - it also discussed the video rental industry as a whole. Like many the nostalgia factor is high when thinking back to the days when going to the video store was the highlight of your weekend. Alan Payne has an inside view of Blockbuster - he managed a video rental competitor for years before become a franchisee owner of multiple blockbusters. In fact - he owned the last remaining blockbusters in 2018. He chronicles the failures of the company, the big misses, and all the ways in which they could have adapted and evolved. They had an opportunity to buy Netflix in it's infancy and laughed it out of the board room, they had opportunities to merge with Redbox and get in on the action but didn't act until it was years too late, they ended late fees which was horrible for keeping their stock on the shelves. So many horrible decisions sealed their fate. Utterly fascinating. ( )