From Silicone Valley insider Malone (The Big Score, 1985), an exhaustively detailed saga of how an entrepreneurial team of executives and staff won fortunes fighting steep odds to complete an Initial Public Offering of stock for MIPS Computer Co. In 1989, skittish about high-tech stocks since the '87 crash, investors grew excited as rumor foretold that MIPS, about to ``go public,'' might explode into a billion-dollar firm. Offering a vanguard technology called ``reduced instruction computing'' to challenge dominant technologies, MIPS also boasted structural and marketing innovations that propelled it from a kitchen table start- up to a $100-million private company in record time. Malone dramatizes MIPS's campaign to woo the financial community, to contend with SEC rigors, and to withstand the threats that a giant competitor would devastate the firm or that a key supplier or partner would defect. Featuring a cast of characters ranging from the savvy CEO to stalwart engineers to Vietnamese immigrant assembly-line workers, this account tries to merge human interest with business tactics. The result relies too much on unremarkable interviews quoted beyond endurance: on career histories, on the prospectus rewriting process, on global travel. Despite some heroic dimension in the team's dedication and resourcefulness, the pursuit of financial triumph does not seem to merit the unrelenting epic celebration shown here. Yet Malone's portrait of MIPS's unusual business structure and tactics (heavy use of partners to maximize growth) is sure to engage business readers seeking models for the coming decade. An informative and lively, although padded, close-up of what drives entrepreneurs who win the electronics industry poker game that most start-ups lose.
Pub Date: June 19, 1991
ISBN: 0-06-016519-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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