A lively chapter in computer history.
A bold tech entrepreneur tells his story.
From the time he was a teenager, Dell, founder of his eponymous personal computer company, was fascinated by computers. When he was 14, he bought an Apple II with his own hard-earned money and promptly took it apart. Tutoring other kids about using computers proved to be “a pretty lucrative sideline,” he recalls, and he joined a local Apple User group, which met “to talk upgrades and trade parts and swap stories.” In a candid second memoir, following Direct From Dell (1998), the author recounts his evolution from computer geek to business mogul and philanthropist, interwoven with a chronicle of his company’s growth, problems, and challenges. Dell’s company began in his dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984, when the college freshman marketed souped-up IBM PCs to doctors, lawyers, and architects. By 1985, incorporated as Dell Computer Corporation, the company was selling its own models; by 1988, it went public; and by 1989, it had subsidiaries in Germany, France, and Canada. Dell had created a niche for which there was unprecedented demand. “Absolutely nobody else,” he writes, “was building blazing-fast computers custom-tailored for consumers’ needs and shipping them out on a lightning-quick turnaround.” In 1990, Dell, not yet 25, was named Inc. magazine’s first Entrepreneur of the Year. But the company began to flounder, and in 2010, Dell wanted to go private as a way to reinvigorate “the entrepreneurial spirit of the company’s origins, of getting much more aggressive on gaining share, of investing in R&D and adding sales capacity.” A business background would be helpful for following the stakes and complexities involved in making a transition from public to private and back to public again: Tensions and machinations (notably from the arrogant corporate raider Carl Icahn) went on for years. A driven, optimistic, and savvy businessman, Dell prevailed, and he is now estimated to be worth more than $30 billion.
A lively chapter in computer history.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-08774-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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