The inside story of a software company capitalizing on the rapid and ever-accelerating growth of the Internet. The author (who co-wrote Computer Wars, 1993, with Charles Morris) clearly—and gratefully—benefited from the monetary success of the company and product he founded, Vermeer Technologies and FrontPage, respectively. FrontPage was one of the first software programs for producing Web pages. Despite the short time involved in this story—only four years pass from initial idea to the company’s acquisition by Microsoft—there were numerous obstacles to overcome. These included grappling with product conception, finding and managing relationships with partners and employees, and stumbling through the intricate maneuvers employed by venture capitalists. Although these elements are common denominators in most business histories, here the author has done more than merely provide a chronology: He details the methodology and processes so well that this book could be used as a primer for entrepreneurs. This practical value is enhanced by the entertainingly frank descriptions of companies and company leaders who interacted with Ferguson. Not one to mince words or shy away from anyone, he provides skewering assessments, taking as his favorite targets Netscape and Microsoft. The former is seen as a company of “amateurs” with an “intellectual vacuum” at the top; the latter as a predatory giant. This criticism, however, is always presented in descriptive perspective and never without objective praise in balance. Vermeer and its founder are not omitted as subjects of this honesty; mistakes, errors in judgment, fits of temper, and clashes of personality mark the path from inception to product launch, providing valuable insight about the rocky path to success. The sole major criticism of this tome: It’s too long. Instead of ending on an obvious high note, once the company has been sold, Ferguson adds two superfluous chapters of lengthy commentary on the faults of Netscape and Microsoft. Still, a refreshingly candid story about hard work and competition. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8129-3143-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
