Amazon.com (ISBN 0684854643, Hardcover)

Bill Gates' Personal Super Secret Private Laptop is both a genuinely witty and inventive swipe at the world's richest man and a masterwork of book design. Each page is a folded-out laptop, with jokes contained on the "screen." Here's a sample, from a chain letter Gates is sending to Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch, and others:

"...But the President of South Korea deleted this E-mail message, and his economy collapsed. Later, he managed to retrieve it and sent it out, and the IMF gave his country a $20 billion bailout. As soon as you receive this message, wire one million dollars to the bank account next to the name below, then add your own name to the list, and send 10 identical E-mail messages to your fellow moguls. Do not break the chain. Mike Milken failed to reply to his E-mail message, and look what happened to him!"

No one has used the ubiquitous graphical user interface as a comic canvas before, and the authors should be commended for their cheeky, stylish innovation. The book's joke-intensive screens include topic lines from Bill Gates news groups, both pro and con; a letter encouraging the Unabomber to correspond with his competitors; a list of new software products--including the Cubicle '98 office politics software ("BackStabber memo-writing program with BlameShifter feature and FingerPointer mouse hardware"); the Mafia's Web page; et cetera. Bill Gates' Personal Super Secret Private Laptop is great fun, and sure to cement this trio's reputation as the masters of parody publishing. And it's much cheaper than a laptop--for now, at least. --Michael Gerber