- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks (5 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340766999
- ISBN-13: 978-0340766996
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 661,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Michael Lewis was supposed to be writing about how Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, was going to turn health care on its ear by launching Healtheon, which would bring the vast majority of the industry's transactions online. So why was he spending so much time on a computerised yacht, each feature installed because, as one technician put it, "someone saw it on Star Trek and wanted one just like it?"
Much of The New New Thing, to be fair, is devoted to the Healtheon story. It's just that Jim Clark doesn't do start-ups the way most people do. "He had ceased to be a businessman", as Lewis puts it, "and become a conceptual artist." After coming up with the basic idea for Healtheon, securing the initial seed money and hiring the people to make it happen, Clark concentrated on the building of Hyperion, a sailboat with a 197-footmast, whose functions are controlled by 25 SGI workstations (a boat that, if he wanted to, Clark could log onto and steer--from anywhere in the world). Keeping up with Clark proves a monumental challenge--"you didn't interact with him", Lewis notes, "so much as hitch a ride on the back of his life"--but one that the author rises to meet with the same frenetic energy and humour of his previous books, Liar's Poker and Trail Fever.
Like those two books, The New New Thing shows how the pursuit of power at its highest levels can lead to the very edges of the surreal, as when Clark tries to fill out an investment profile for a Swiss bank, where he intends to deposit less than .05 percent of his financial assets. When asked to assess his attitude toward financial risk, Clark searches in vain for the category of "people who sought to turn 10 million dollars into one billion in a few months" and finally tells the banker, "I think this is for a different ... person." There have been a lot of profiles of Silicon Valley companies and the way they've revamped the economy in the 1990s--The New New Thing is one of the first books fully to depict the sort of man that has made such companies possible. --Ron Hogan,Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
In the last years of the millennium, bestselling author Michael Lewis sets out 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, the billionaire who founded Netscape and Silicon Graphics and who now aims to turn the healthcare industry on its head with his new billion-dollar project. Lewis accompanies Clark on the maiden voyage of his vast yacht and, on the sometimes hazardous journey, takes the reader on the ride of a lifetime through a landscape of geeks and billionaires. Through every brilliant anecdote and funny character sketch, Michael Lewis allows us an inside look at the world of the super-rich, whilst drawing a map of free enterprise in the twenty-first century.
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First Sentence
The original plan, which Lord knows didn't mean very much when that plan had been made by Jim Clark, was that we would test the boat quickly in the North Sea and then sail it across the Atlantic Ocean. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
The original plan, which Lord knows didn't mean very much when that plan had been made by Jim Clark, was that we would test the boat quickly in the North Sea and then sail it across the Atlantic Ocean. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Toy Story for High Tech Billionaires,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)
This review is from: The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (Hardcover)
This book is the potboiler version of how to create new industries, and advance the world for everyone. Like the Victorian writers who detailed lovingly how royalty employed personal plumbing, Lewis focuses on Clark's obsession with gadgets. Many technically-strong, wealthy men like gadgets, so this is the Walter Mitty look for everyone who shares that fascination. On the other hand, Lewis has little idea why people like Clark are successful and what the lessons are for the rest of us. If you like the People Magazine approach to financial journalism, you've found your book. If you want to learn how to be a high tech entrepreneur, I see little that will help you. This is a soap opera tale, and if read as such you will feel totally rewarded. A larger-than-life character like Jim Clark makes a wonderful subject for a Lewis book. Enjoy!
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sycophantic clap-trap,
By A Customer
This review is from: The New New Thing: How Some Man You've Never Heard of Just Changed Your Life (Paperback)
Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. I bought this book for two reasons a) The author came highly recommended for his book Liars Poker and b) if he did for the dot-com industry what he did for the finance industry it would be a great insight and a great read to boot.What I got was a sycophantic, one-man song of praise for Jim Clarke. It was sickening in its own right, and depresssing to see such a sell out by the author.. That this book ever made it to print is a crime. You know a book is bad, when the quotes on the dust-cover telling us how good the book is are not about the book in your hand, but another book - in this case Liars Poker. The only good thing that came out of this is that I went and bought Liars Poker. It was every bit as good as I expected it to be. Shame on you Michael Lewis
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another great book by Michael Lewis,
By
This review is from: The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (Hardcover)
I read this book because I am a fan of Michael Lewis, and I enjoyed reading Liar's Poker and Moneyball. This book is about Jim Clark and Silicon Valley. Clark was an unsuccessful college professor who founded three billion-dollar companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon. I personally liked the part about Silicon Valley. I found it very educational to learn how an idea can be taken from scratch and at the end sold in the public markets through an IPO. After reading this book, people who are constantly chasing the next hot IPOs may wake up and realize that most of the money has already been made by the founders, venture capitalists, and investment bankers, before leftovers are served for the public.- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
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