An intriguing business account with a focus on the tech industry.
An executive recounts the prodigious growth of his Texas-based tech company in this debut memoir.
Observing the rise of the tech industry in 1999, Napier was more than a little curious. As he worked a very unsexy job at a private equity firm, “internet company founders were indulging in spending orgies and VIP parties. Although I was skeptical of the environment, I also felt envious that everyone seemed to have found a job at which they wore flip flops and jeans, and earned huge stock option packages.” Then he heard about a web hosting company called Rackspace.com that was in need of a CFO. Entrusted with taking the company public, the author was excited to work not only in the booming internet economy, but also in San Antonio, in the heart of his beloved home state. While the company expanded rapidly due to the ever increasing hosting needs of other companies, Napier would soon learn that the dotcom explosion was not all easy money. The bubble burst just as Rackspace was attempting to go public, and the company teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. It took some creative problem-solving, a little luck, and a big portion of Texas gumption to get things back on track, but the author was able to right the ship, rise in the company, and eventually make Rackspace a billion-dollar behemoth. Napier’s book is part of the Braun Collection, “a growing suite of…fast-paced executive memoirs, biographies, and storyboards.” The author tells his tale in an eclectic prose that mixes industry jargon with bro-like enthusiasm. Here he discusses Rackspace’s initial office: “We ate Class C-minus office space for breakfast, but the rent was cheap, and our data center kicked ass.” Here he reassures his infant son, Cade, of the company’s future: “Look, dude, it’s gonna be okay.” Alternating his experiences at Rackspace with stories from his personal life as a young husband and father, Napier shows how decisions made at work can affect routines at home and vice versa. His tale does not rise to the level of drama that would entertain a general audience, but those interested in learning from the successes and mistakes of experienced business executives (which is the mission of the Braun Collection) will likely be captivated by the author’s chronicle of the wild years of the 2000s.
An intriguing business account with a focus on the tech industry.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-692-17488-3
Page Count: 166
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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
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