Book Description
The book that does for Silicon Valley what "Liar's
Poker" did for Wall Street.
In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis
sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the
world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who
embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim
Clark, who is about to create his third, separate,
billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then
Netscape-which launched the Information Age-and now
Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare
industry on its head.
Despite the variety of his achievements, Clark thinks of
himself mainly as the creator of "Hyperion," which
happens to be a sailboat . . . not just an ordinary yacht,
but the world's largest single-mast vessel, a machine more
complex than a 747. Clark claims he will be able to sail it
via computer from his desk in San Francisco, and the new code
may contain the seeds of his next billion-dollar coup.
On the wings of Lewis's celebrated storytelling, the
reader takes the ride of a lifetime through this strange
landscape of geeks and billionaires. We get the inside story
of the battle between Netscape and Microsoft; we sit in the
room as Clark tries to persuade the investment bankers that
Healtheon is the next Microsoft; we get queasy as Clark pits
his boat against the rage of the North Atlantic in winter.
And in every brilliant anecdote and character sketch, Lewis
is drawing us a map of markets and free enterprise in the
twenty-first century.
