The New New Thing: How Some Man You've Never Heard of Just Changed Your Life Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The New New Thing: How Some Man You've Never Heard of Just Changed Your Life Book

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.comRead More

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  • Foyles

    *The classic New York Times Bestseller*'Hugely enjoyable...it reads like a novel, a fantasy tale of rags and riches that happens to be true' Sunday Times'A superb book... Lewis makes Silicon Valley as thrilling and intelligible as he made Wall Street in his best-selling Liar's Poker' Time'A fascinating journey into the Wild West of American capitalism'Daily Telegraph__________In the last years of the millennium, 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 latest 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.__________From the author of the #1 bestseller THE BIG SHORT and the original business classic LIAR'S POKER comes the definitive 21st-century business story. 'A superb book. . . . Lewis makes Silicon Valley as thrilling and intelligible as he made Wall Street in his best-selling Liar's Poker.' Time

  • Play

    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.

  • ASDA

    Michael Lewis sets out to find the most important technology entrepreneur - the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds Jim Clark who aims to turn the healthcare industry on its head with his project. Lewis joins Clark on his yacht taking the reader on the trip of a lifetime.

  • 0340766999
  • 9780340766996
  • Michael Lewis
  • 5 October 2000
  • Coronet
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 256
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