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
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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