[.ca] New New Thing (ISBN 0140296468)

From Amazon.com:
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 computerized 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 startups 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-foot mast, 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 humor 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 ten 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

disgusting portrait of greed and conceit:
I've enjoyed other books my Michael Lewis (esp. Liar's Poker) but this one was sickening. He treats every action and word from Jim Clark as manna from heaven, apparently on the basis that Jim Clark is rich, therefore he must be a genius. One hopes that the 97% slide in Healtheon's stock may have set him straight on this. This book was \ohard\c to read in 2000. By now there might be a certain unintentional humor in reading this kind of pandering, knowing better, but a couple of hundred pages of it is probably more black humor than you need. For actual information about silicon valley and the dotcom era, try High Stakes, No Prisoners by Charles Ferguson, or Nudist on the Late Shift, by Po Bronson.

Not as good as Liars poker:
Very well written but gives an insight into Clark's life more than an insight into Silicon Valley. Reads more like a biography and does not capture the wheeling dealing in Silicon Valley whcih the reader might have expected to see.

Multi-entrepreneur Jim Clark - Genius and/or madman???:
Michael Lewis is the author of several entertaining books, such as Liar's Poker (1989), Next: The Future Just Happened (2001), Moneyball (2003). The author explains that it was not his intention to write an autobiography about Jim Clark, but he was trying to capture the entrepreneurial spirit of Silicon Valley. However, due to the amazing enthusiasm of multiple entrepreneur Jim Clark Lewis ends up following Clark. Jim Clark, who originally was a technology professor, is the first person to start 3 companies that each exceed a market valuation of $1 billion each: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon. The book starts with the maiden trial of Jim Clark's multi-million dollar yacht 'Hyperion'. This enormous yacht is full of (ridiculous) technology and should be able sail on its own. The trial of the 'Hyperion' is just the start of an almost endless list of crazy, wild stories about technology companies, Internet start-ups, and IPOs'. The author seems to have trouble keeping up with Jim Clark's ideas and (true) stories. Yes, I do like this book. Although it mainly focuses on multi-entrepeneur Jim Clark, it also describes the stories behind various Internet-companies (AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc.) and the Internet bubble. The writing style of the author is extremely entertaining, while still containing lots of information and facts. The book feels like a rollercoaster, but it is great fun!! I recommend it highly.

Life of an Internet Salesman:
When Lewis set out to write this book, he was attempting to expose and satirize silicon valley in the same way he had skewered wall street in his previous books. In the course of writing the book, he is introduced to Jim Clark. The New New Thing then becomes a hagiography of Clark's personality, ambitions, and achievements. Though I found the book entertaining and well-written, I was disappointed that the author casts such an unskeptical eye on Clark. Lewis saves his satire for the one person that most readers could empathize with - Allan (the Captain of Clark's boat) and an internet investor. One quarter of the book is devoted to Lewis's time on Clark's yacht - this narrative is wholly gratuitous and lends little to the story other than to show that the author had unparalleled acess to Clark. This book would be richer, if a preface was added. Lewis wrote this book before the NASDAQ topped off in March 2000 - and one wonders if Lewis would assign Clark any responsibility for the hype that was created and the real life consequences for those who lost large amounts of money in the ensuing crash.

A Silicon Valley Story:
I really enjoyed the story line here. Jim Clark was portrayed as a man who had vision, yet the desire to never be "locked in" to something for too long. One might wonder if all of the time spent dealing with the Board of Silicon Graphics made him change his behavior. I do not agree with some of the posts here stating that the author lives and breathes on the words of Jim Clark. He was a business man that believed there were opportunities and quickly acted upon them. Like everything else, there will always be great and poor business decisions from a leader. No one is an exception here; including Mr. Gates. So, back to the review; this is an excellent book to give folks an insight into the crazy late 90's, where business vision was accelerated 10 fold. Some big successes and many failure stories.