Product Description

Silicon Valley is a true-life Tomorrowland. Far more than an engine of economic growth and worldwide symbol of technological know-how, the Valley competes with Hollywood and Washington in the cultures of money, celebrity, and success. It is a place where tinkerers become Internet tycoons literally overnight -- a place where everyday life meets virtual reality meets unadulterated myth. It's also the only place in the world where you can buy $14 ostrich salami or pay $1 million for a fixer-upper home.

In the first full-scale portrait of this fabled high-tech corner of California, an award-winning Newsweek culture writer traces the sky-rocket rise of Silicon Valley from 1938, when Bill Hewlett and David Packard started in a Palo Alto garage, to the wired corporate "campuses" of today, where young billionaires confront "The Prince of Darkness" (Bill Gates) and "Elvis" himself, Larry Ellison. We see Steve Jobs evolve from prodigy to parish to elder statesman, observe the influence of venture capitalists such as John Doerr, and watch a new generation of electronic alchemists turn megabytes into megabucks at the head of companies like Netscape and Yahoo!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2325174 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 358 pages

From Amazon.com
Pop quiz: Where are American kids taught the nuances of being millionaires as part of their junior high curriculum? Where do guests at a posh outdoor party grouse about the defects of high-end flushable Porta-Johns? Where does a school auction rake in $439,000? The answer: Silicon Valley, of course. David A. Kaplan captures all that excess and more in The Silicon Boys.

Kaplan's book is a history of the Valley, from the time when Stanford professor Frederick Terman encouraged David Packard and Bill Hewlett to establish their own company to when Sequoia Capital invested $1 million in a startup founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo. In between are the many Valley legends, including Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, Kleiner Perkins, Apple, Oracle, and Netscape--as well as some of its most notable failures and tragedies, such as William Shockley and Gary Kildall. While the book begins with the opulence of Woodside, California, it ends surprisingly enough in Portland, Maine, with Bob Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, who fled the Valley for something "fresher" and "more alive."

As he traces the short history of the area, Kaplan, a senior writer at Newsweek, detects a not-so-subtle change in its values. He writes, "Nobody appears to be having quite as good a time in Silicon Valley. Passions have become mere professions; impulsiveness is now compulsiveness.... The Valley once was a new machine. It changed the world. It may do so yet again. But the machine has no soul anymore." Here's a thoughtful and colorful read for anyone interested in one of the most dynamic places on the planet. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly
While Po Bronson's The Nudist on the Late Shift (Forecasts, June 7) delves into the daily life of Silicon Valley's hungry strivers (some of whom succeed), Kaplan takes a broader view and focuses on the menAand the Valley bigshots are almost all menAwho have already become legends and made Silicon Valley into the "Valley of the Dollars." As Kaplan sees it, men like workaholic venture capitalist John Doerr, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon) pay lip service to the Valley ethos of innovation while relentlessly searching for the quickest way to the next buck. In addition to his rough handling of figures accustomed to VIP treatment, he takes a historical perspective, looking back further than the 1970s, when the area earned its name, all the way to the 1930s, when two prized pupils of Fred Terman, a Stanford professor commonly thought of as the "Father of Silicon Valley," started a company. Their names were David Packard and Bill Hewlett. Kaplan, a senior writer for Newsweek, salts his story with tart observations of Valley culture: Where else, he asks, is there a "junior-high curriculum that teaches basic skills in How to be a Millionaire. Every year the first math assignment for seventh-graders is spending one million hypothetical dollars and plotting it on a spreadsheet." Mixing history, reportage and healthy irreverence, Kaplan gently punctures the Valley's most cherished myths about itself, and, in a nod to Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, concludes somewhat wistfully that "the machine has no soul anymore." (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

USAToday
"Anyone looking for a fast-paced, fun history of Silicon Valley should turn to The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams by Newsweek senior writer David Kaplan. He defty weaves the tortured tale of the valley's rise from a bucolic landscape of apricot groves and horses to the engine of innovation that's reshaping the world. His prologue alone is a must-read."