The One Thing Worth Doing - John Pope

Programmer Martin Cardwell tends to float along, letting chance or others make his big decisions. So when the dot-com crash of the early 2000s leaves him jobless and disoriented, he looks to his charismatic childhood friend Swanson Geach, the only person around who's got life figured out. But as Swanson's big idea, a vacation rental business in Paris, goes sideways, Martin gets a sink-or-swim education - provided by the local scammers, a luminous grad student wise beyond her years, an offbeat research center, and his old friend Swanson, who seems to be coming slowly unhinged.