The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of ... (ISBN 0767906039)

Amazon.com Review:
Perhaps more than anywhere else, Silicon Valley in the latter part of the 20th century has come to represent the essence of the American dream. Its economy has resembled the various rushes and booms of the 1800s. The Valley is a unique place in a unique time, where just about anyone with a good idea, an aptitude for hard work, and a boatload of luck has a chance to make it big--really big. In The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson intends to capture the spirit of the Valley, leading us through a series of vignettes that takes us from a "near brush with sudden wealth" to a $400 million buyout; from life on the edge with a group of Java programmers to the plight of a futurist writer with the looming deadline for a 9,000-word article. For Bronson, the appeal of the Valley is this: Every generation that came before us had to make a choice in life between pursuing a steady career and pursuing wild adventures. In Silicon Valley, that trade-off has been recircuited. By injecting mind-boggling risk into the once stodgy domain of gray-suited business, young people no longer have to choose. It's a two-for-one deal: the career path has become an adventure into the unknown. Like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, what makes Bronson's book work is a talent for narrative. He presents compelling stories about those who make it--for example, Ben Chiu (Killerapp.com, C/NET) and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail)--as well as those whom we'll never hear of again: the database salesman working on the "hockey stick" at the close of the quarter and the "kiss-ass entrepreneur" who's taken up COBOL programming to make ends meet. The Nudist on the Late Shift is for anyone who has wondered what life on the modern frontier is like--and for those who are already there, the reflection might be revealing. --Harry C. Edwards

Wish I'd Discovered It 5 Years Ago:
This book is riveting. I'd never heard of Po Bronson and knew little about the Silicon Valley .com era when I picked it up. Bronson's ability to build portrait after portrait of the individuals behind the .com era make this a page-turner. In the end, I'm not sure there's any other way to tell this story, but as the sum of its parts.

Bard of the Silicon Valley:
I first read this book a month before my first visit to the Silicon Valley in 1999 to meet my Angel investor - another concept native to the area. I re-read this now after 7 years of living the Silicon Valley life. There is no doubt that Po Bronson is the best messenger that the Valley has. Whether you are an insider or an outsider, if you ever sat back and wondered "what the heck is the Silicon Valley", Bronson is your go-to guy. In an earlier review of a book by the same author, I likened Bronson's First $20 Million... about Silicon Valley to Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker about Wall Street. Being a collection of true stories, Nudist on the Late Shift is a more appropriate comparison. The New New Thing by Michael Lewis lacked the novelty to quench the thirst of the Silicon Valley insider. The focus on Jim Clark's story, that too written after his 3rd billion dollar IPO, made it larger than life and failed to capture the essence of the Valley culture. The Nudist on the Late Shift covers the dozen people who are likely to be sitting around you at a Starbucks in Santa Clara on a warm and sunny day. It is a good balance of the haves-and-the-have-nots, the ones who made it and those who did not, yet all the ones that make Silicon Valley unique and not any that do not. Even as a journalist for Wired, WSJ, NYT Magazine and Forbes ASAP, Bronson has always been able to look under the rugs and beyond the obvious in a manner that manifests originality, besides a deep understanding of and keen interest in the subject. Being a San Francisco resident and a Stanford grad, he has all the pre-requisites that one needs in order to write about this subject. Like every bard who loves to tell stories about his favorite thing, Bronson engages the reader with his edgy, cynical, witty and optimistic style. Many of the books written about Silicon Valley in the hey-days of 1998-99 are largely obsolete now. This book suffers from the fever pitch of those days, and does not reconcile with the current environment. Yet, the essence of what Bronson has captured has stood the test of time. In a way, it is fortunate that he did so during the boom when that party was on steroids and the characteristics were magnified. The bucketing of stories and individuals into Newcomers, IPO, Entrepreneur, Programmers, Salespeople, Futurist and Dropout is a smart one. A good encapsulation of this place we know and love.

Poor Read:
This book was poorly written. There was no real plot, just one crazy story after another. What a complete waste of time. When I was finished with the book, I left it on the train I was taking. I didn't want anything to do with it.

Interesting profile of the silicon valley culture...:
Having lived through the tech bubble as a techie, but not ever spent time in the valley, the book was a good perspective on the heart of the tech culture. My major issue with the book is that although extremely interesting and well themed, the stories are not fundamentally weaved together tightly with the theme. Bronson started strong out of the gate. The first few chapters were humorous, funny and extremely fascinating, but the stories did not maintain their grasp on my attention as the book progressed. If you are looking to understand the oddities of the tech culture that produced the technologies now ubiquitous in our culture: yahoo, netscape, even google... this is a fascinating read. If you're that not particularly intrigued by the valley, this is probably still interesting, but not worth wading through.

Inspiration, educational, hilarious:
A series of stories from the valley in the mid 90's by journalist who was there. My title pretty much sums it up. Very enjoyable reading.