While Internet stocks are ballooning, so are books about the players. Here’s a strong entry in the genre, savvy and clever.
The growing subspecialty of business books that deals with the brainiac talents and picaresque entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley is upgraded to version 2.0 with this knowledgeable communiqué from cyberspace.
Just as Hollywood is said to have done, Silicon Valley lures mature talent and young folk bright or attractive enough to cast hundreds of sitcoms. Novelist and Wired contributor Bronson (Bombardiers, 1995; The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, 1997) presents the wildcatters of the valley, from the seller of used cubicles to the multimillionaire who bedded down each night under his desk, from the devious headhunters to the young CEOs of software firms with killer apps. In a series of profiles, he probes their minds and hearts. We witness the closing days of an IPO (more dramatic than the preceding scutwork). Here, among the processors, terminals, modems, and servers are the individual progrananers, salespeople, venture capitalists, visionaries who build financial empires on vapor, and the new generation of studly geniuses who truly want to change the way the world operates. It just takes being first with one big idea. Here are the superachievers who risk all for exponential dollars. And here’s the nude guy, who is no urban legend. It’s all quite bizarre, of course, especially the money, which is “puppylike, untrained,” i.e., “it doesn’t behave commonsensically…People give money out here just to be part of the excitement of the deal.” The stories are told with vitality and more than a touch of gonzo. Though basic familiarity with the terminology might be nice, after reading this entertainment, you’ll think you understand the slang, the jargon, the gibberish, and the buzzwords of the valley.
While Internet stocks are ballooning, so are books about the players. Here’s a strong entry in the genre, savvy and clever.Pub Date: July 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-50277-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1999
A fairly pedantic and at times self-serving walk through the signs of our times. The idea that signs are a reflection of a society’s soul is an intriguing one. Unfortunately, Starr, now president of her family’s sign company, ArtKraft Straus, and Hayman (Journalism/New York Univ.) don’t delve as deeply into this idea as they promise when they write in their opening sentence, “Our signs tell us who we are.” Still, the book is fairly useful in its historic tracing of America’s fixation with neon, something about which Starr knows quite a bit since Artkraft Strauss has literally lit much of Times Square for the last century. The authors trace the beginnings of the square’s status as the supersign center of the world. There’s a section on O.J. Gude, nicknamed the “Lamplighter of Broadway,” and information on the division between Thomas Edison and his championing of direct current versus the alternating current theories of Nikola Tesla. The authors chronicle as well neon’s metamorphosis from a symbol of richness in the 1920s to its later tackier connotation. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the description of the creation of larger moving signs such as the 60-foot-tall Miss Youth Forum, a sensuous babe who sashayed across a 100-foot-wide sign on top of the Brill Building beginning in 1947. The section on how the lighting community banded together to fight the proposed renovation of Times Square, a rehabilitation that they feared would make the Great White Way a lot less white, is interesting as well. From Times Square, Signs and Wonders moves westward to look at the development of signs in Las Vegas, a.k.a. Glitter Gulch, and Hollywood. More than the average person would ever care to know about signage, but a serviceable history for lighting and marketing buffs nonetheless. (48 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-48602-2
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
A lighthearted look at a fading American institution and the products found on its shelves. Staten (Ol’ Diz: A Biography of Dizzy Dean, 1992; Did Monkeys Invent the Monkey Wrench?, not reviewed; etc.), who fondly remembers the corner drugstore of his own youth, briefly recounts the history of this fixture of American small-town life as “pharmacy and apothecary, drugstore and general store, prescription center and community center, soda fountain and social hub.” However, the greater part of his attention is devoted not to the institution itself but to its merchandise. Starting with the head and working his way down to the feet, Staten profiles selected items from aspirin to corn removers. Hair products, especially hair restorers, seem to have a special fascination for the balding Staten, who inserts regular reports on his personal experience with Rogaine (yes, he grew some hair, but not nearly enough). Among the capsule histories included here are those of dandruff shampoos, toothpaste, Band-Aids, Vaseline, condoms, and diapers. The curious can discover how Maybelline and Ben-Gay got their names and the real people behind Lydia Pinkham’s Herbal Compound and Dr. Scholl’s Foot-Eazers. Inexplicably, Staten adds an appendix listing the addresses of the 71 remaining drugstores in the country bearing the name Corner Drug. Rather less than a social history and far from comprehensive, but full of entertaining if trivial facts presented with good humor.
Pub Date: June 15, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-83485-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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