"Steel Barons is a roller-coaster, eyewitness window into the early days of the post-Soviet Union. Everything you would expect from the Roaring 90s in a place like Ukraine, you get: mobsters, deals in rooms full of cigar smoke, mercenaries, molls, fashionistas, yachts, and politicians with their hands out — they're all there. The story is told by a young American man who starts out innocent and trusting, but learns fast. Although fictional probably everything in this book happened. The author is a guy from Missouri who came to Kyiv in the early days and no doubt saw a whole lot of what's in the book, with his own eyes."
— Stefan K.
"The Steel Barons", although labeled "fiction", is a classic reference to the business world in the Ukraine. This book is recommended to any expat coming into the Ukraine to carry out business and understand the people. I am a geologist looking for mining opportunities in central and eastern Europe, and this book has helped me to understand all of eastern Europe."
— Thomas A.
"I could not stop reading it all night. It's written in the best traditions of good literature when you can visualize the people and events that are described in the book. You trust the author. The pace is so fast that you are galloping through the events not willing to stop. And finally it comes to the end, you put the book aside with a feeling that you could have read much more of it."
— Tatyana A. Gelfer
"Having been an ex-pat in Kiev in the 1990's, the same time as this book is set I can attest to its realism and truth. The Steel Barons is a gritty black comedy showing the journey of a US Lawyer reluctantly stranded in the newly independent Ukraine at a time of great social and political change. Losing everything he has to start again but now is a small fish in a big pond that it brimming with Soviet Sharks... With vivid characters and a compelling narrative, Alex Frishberg has created a gem."
— A. W. SHAW
