PALO ALTO, Calif. (CNN/Money) - As the various scandals and screaming headlines of the financial world have unfolded over the past two years, I've often reflected on my frequent interactions with the headline makers.

I remember visiting Henry Blodget at his CIBC Oppenheimer office, just before he became famous by predicting that Amazon.com's shares would hit $400.

After meeting Frank Quattrone, I found my first Silicon Valley apartment, a dump located a stone's throw from Deutche Morgan Grenfell's California outpost.

Then there was the time at a Microsoft analyst day in Seattle, when I wandered into an alternative viewing room to find Mary Meeker was sitting alone to escape the hubbub. We chatted about Mr. Softee for a while.

Were I as clever as the former Wall Street analyst Andy Kessler, I would have turned my reminiscences into a book, which is what he's done. It's called "Wall Street Meat: Jack Grubman, Frank Quattrone, Mary Meeker, Henry Blodget and Me."

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It's a lighthearted, breezy look at many of the people Kessler's known during his 18 years in the tech-stock business. It's also a scathing critique of everything that's wrong with Wall Street, not to mention what's wrong with a few of the critics as well.

Kessler was a successful analyst and fund manager before quitting a year or so ago to devote himself full time to writing. His "Manager's Journal" pieces in the Wall Street Journal are the epitome of well reasoned and bitingly truthful commentaries. In this book, he furthers his reputation for insight by appearing, Zelig-like, at many of the most interesting moments of recent tech-stock history.

Kessler got into the stock racket the old-fashioned way, by learning a little about an industry -- in his case, working as an engineer at AT&T -- and then becoming an analyst with next to no training. In his first days at Paine Webber, Kessler was present when John Sculley told analysts that the days of Steve Jobs were numbered at Apple.

And so it went for Kessler, who moved from Paine Webber to Morgan Stanley and eventually to San Francisco, where he worked first as a venture capitalist and later as a fund manager.

Kessler turns his pen on nearly everyone he comes into contact with. Some observations:

• Grubman is ultra-smart but a blowhard, always interested in punching someone out.
• Meeker is a neurotic who has feelings about companies rather than analytical thoughts about them.
• Quattrone is the back-stabbing head of banking who figured out the game long before anyone else did -- and spent years trying to perfect it.
• Blodget is an intelligent press hound with no clue about what happens when stocks go down.

"Wall Street Meat" refers to Kessler's realization that analysts are just tools, either for the trading desk (in his early days at Paine Webber) or for investment bankers (from his days at Morgan Stanley up to the pre-Spitzer era).

It's a book Wall Street veterans will want to read because it will give them a good chuckle to see they weren't alone in their frustrations. It's also a book the general public will enjoy because it will explain some of the financial world's mysteries to them, and in an entertaining way.

Kessler, who lives near my Palo Alto office (full disclosure: he and I share the occasional Chinese meal), chose to self-publish his book. The publisher, Escape Velocity Press, is a joke referring to his former investment firm, Velocity Capital. You can find it at Amazon.com.

Adam Lashinsky is a senior writer for Fortune magazine. Send e-mail to Adam at lashinskysbottomline@yahoo.com.

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