Valley of Genius, Adam Fisher
Valley of Genius, Adam Fisher
14 Rating(s)
List: $38.99 | Sale: $27.30
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Valley of Genius
The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)

Author: Adam Fisher

Narrator: Pete Larkin

Unabridged: 18 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 07/10/2018

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and Nurtureshock
A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley -- from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.
Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly--and as aggressively--as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation.

So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius...

Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, Valley of Genius takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. Read it to discover the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.

Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by HIRE A HACKER on 2023-01-31 02:30:21

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Goodreads review by Gary on July 13, 2018

This book is “genius” on a number of fronts. The first is the writing itself. There isn’t any. With little narrative support the book is entirely made up of individual quotations grouped and stacked around the story of one Silicon Valley venture or another. At first this gives the impression that the......more

Goodreads review by Blake on October 18, 2018

A decent index for other great books to read I just finished reading this, and in a word, it was decent.  What made this book unique and interesting was not so much the content, but the way that it was presented: specifically, the narrative structure - there just isn't one.  Fisher's text is an assembl......more

Goodreads review by Shannon on January 01, 2019

I put this down 1/3 of the way through and then tried again and put this down again permanently 2/3 of the way through not because of format or content but because of the personal feelings it invoked. I worked in the valley in the 90s and it was overflowing with spoiled, privileged, narcissistic mal......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on July 09, 2021

An awesomely inspiring book for those who are interested in the history and contemporary heartbeat of the valley. I would highly recommend this book to anyone in tech, and will likely read it again in the coming years. Full of candid commentary on the valley’s most notorious and iconic characters, c......more

Goodreads review by Mala on August 19, 2018

Valley of Genius" tells the story of the birth, growth, and coming of age of Silicon Valley in the Bay Area of California. It is the story from Atari and PARC Xerox to Twitter and Facebook and it is told by the players themselves. This makes for very interesting reading and I was fascinated by it. T......more


Quotes

"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords."—Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and Nurtureshock

"VALLEY OF GENIUS is its own kind of genius. Original in its construction, prodigious, funny, raw and polished, it is an amazing work of reporting from a skilled writer with an insider's love of Silicon Valley. You feel like you are in the room with some of the greatest entrepreneurial minds-men and women-of our time, listening to history in the making."—Julian Guthrie, New York Times bestselling author of How to Make a Spaceship

"The beauty of oral histories is that enough time has passed for people to say what really happened. And what really happened is one of the great stories of our day. Gripping."—Chris Anderson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Long Tail and Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

"A fantastic read! Adam Fisher's history of Silicon Valley is compelling and thorough, full of fascinating and inspiring stories carefully curated by someone who truly knows his stuff. Should be on every entrepreneur's desk!"—Ben Mezrich, New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires

"VALLEY OF GENIUS is a blast-it's like eavesdropping on a huge party of all the hackers, thinkers and creators that built our digital world. Every page has some crazy detail I never knew before; I couldn't put it down."—Clive Thompson, author of Smarter Than You Think

"Much of the modern world was invented before the public noticed what was happening in the emerging Internet. Idealists and innovators worked together to invent the future that we live in now. VALLEY OF GENIUS is their story, told well, and I really enjoyed it."—Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist

"The stories Adam Fisher weaves together in VALLEY OF GENIUS alone make the book a fascinating read: tales of heroic innovation, risk and reward, boom and bust cycles. But Fisher achieves something even more important with this 'autobiography' of Silicon Valley: an understanding of how momentous technological changes in society come about, and how they can sometimes surprise even their creators with their broader impact."—Steven Johnson, bestselling author of How We Got to Now

"Adam Fisher has given us an animated, incisive account of Silicon Valley history, with all of its iconic heroes and villains, told in a symphony of testimonials from the very people who had a seat at the revolution."—Brad Stone, bestselling author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts

"If you want to hear how technology changed the world, why not hear it from those who did the changing? VALLEY OF GENIUS captures the voices of a revolution as they tell the biggest story of our time."—Steven Levy, author of Hackers

"VALLEY OF GENIUS is the creation story of our digital universe straight from the sweaty, brilliant (and often surprisingly funny) gods themselves. A fast, fun, and important prose poem that runs Atari to Zuckerberg. This is like an oral history of rock n' roll, if only rock n' roll was half as creative, smart, dirty, or new."—Charles Graeber, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Nurse