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The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

Michael Lewis

3.73 · Rating details · 8,727 ratings · 381 reviews

In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis set out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world’s most important technology entrepreneur. He found this in Jim Clark, a man whose achievements include the founding of three separate billion-dollar companies. Lewis also found much more, and the result—the best-selling book The New New Thing—is an ingeniou ...more

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Paperback, 349 pages

Published January 6th 2014 by W. W. Norton Company (first published 1999)

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Jan 20, 2018 Dianne rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, economics

This is a book which would be of interest to investors and to computer engineers. I read The New New Thing because Michael Lewis is one of the very best investigative journalists of our times. His research into the business side of Silicon Valley during the 1980s and 1990s provides information only those who read the scientific journals would have knowledge of. His biography of Jim Clark tells of his desire to design a robotic sailboat. This has now been accomplished. Students from the Universit This is a book which would be of interest to investors and to computer engineers. I read The New New Thing because Michael Lewis is one of the very best investigative journalists of our times. His research into the business side of Silicon Valley during the 1980s and 1990s provides information only those who read the scientific journals would have knowledge of. His biography of Jim Clark tells of his desire to design a robotic sailboat. This has now been accomplished. Students from the University of British Columbia, in Canada, designed a robotic boat named Ada that sailed from Newfoundland to Portugal to Florida. Unmanned it survived the wretched hurricanes of 2017 in the Atlantic Ocean. I was very interested to read that this was an idea that originated in Silicon Valley back in the 1990s, a pet project of the ultra successful Jim Clark. Jim Clark the brilliant businessman and computer scientist has the ability to turn a simple idea into a technology company worth billions. He did this with four companies Silicon Grafics, Netscape, Healtheon WebMD and myCFO.The venture capitalists were taking by far the largest profit from the technical inventions of the hard working and talented engineers. Clark got wise to this and took steps to make things fair for his employees. Silicon Valley though home of casually dressed young people is anything but laid back. The competition to stay in the forefront of every new technological breakthrough is fierce. The U.S. and Canada have been surpassed in their quest for acquiring brilliant engineers. The educational system designed in India under Nehru in the 1960s has produced the top computer engineers in the world. Each year the top 2000 students there are given entrance to and full scholarships to the highly rated Indian Institutes of Technology. Many of these graduates leave India to work in Silicon Valley. It is important to note that this book is not new. It was written in 1999. There is a epilogue in the edition
I read in which updated information is given. One of the new new things in the lifetime of most people who would be reading this book is the new engineers. They are computer engineers and many of them do not know how the engine on a ship is constructed. This is shown when the engine in Clark's yacht Hyperion continually broke down. They were only able to fix the problem if it had something to do with the signal coming from the computers. There is always value in the old, old thing too. ...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Mark rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It is hard to fathom Jim Clark, whom this book is really about, lead three different Billion Dollar companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon (WebMD). He and his companies are the focus of this book. The author also gives a heck of a review of the crazy times that were the late 1990s in technology but as well as the stock market. I think Biff Tannen (you know Biff from Back to the Future) would have been better off with this book than his Sports Almanac. Imagine knowing the exact comp It is hard to fathom Jim Clark, whom this book is really about, lead three different Billion Dollar companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon (WebMD). He and his companies are the focus of this book. The author also gives a heck of a review of the crazy times that were the late 1990s in technology but as well as the stock market. I think Biff Tannen (you know Biff from Back to the Future) would have been better off with this book than his Sports Almanac. Imagine knowing the exact companies to pick in the stock market during the tech stock bubble. Not only that but when to take your money off the table and out of the market.

After having read first Moneyball, then the Blindside it was wired to go backwards and read one of Michael Lewis's earlier works. He has certainly improved as time has gone forward. This book seemed a bit more raw, and less polished than his later works. It was nice to walk through the time line of the internet bubble again and think back to when the most legally created money was happening in history. Again this is why I think Biff would have been better off with this than the almanac from Back to the Future. Our good friend Biff probably would have had a hard time finding his way to Vegas to make a legal bet. Just as in the line from the book "Change leads to wealth and wealth means money", in Biff's case or Jim Clark's.

It was shocking to find out the main reason Clark pushed for the Netscape IPO was to finance his boat. In fact the story of the boat he built felt really disjointed but they do tie together Silicon Valley and starting up companies with building a computerized yacht. I really despise the fact Jim created myCFO. To create yet another company after he has already start 3 with such a simple concept is irritating to us mere mortals.

I would say only three groups of people would enjoy this book:

1. Michael Lewis Fans
2. Tech nerds who want to hear the inside story of SGI and Netscape
3. People from the valley who want to recall the gold old days

Other than those groups you can probably skip this one. Well, that is unless you have a time machine and want to make some serious money in the stock market. ...more

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Aug 31, 2014 Darwin8u rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

“Never was a man’s love of risk so beautifully amplified by his environment as Clark’s was in Silicon Valley.”
― Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

description

I did like Lewis' exploration of the relationship of Investment banking and the information technology companies that seemed to weed up in Silicon Valley during the late 90s. The normal venture technology relationship seemed to invert in Silicon Valley. Power shifted from the money men to the idea men, or perhaps not even the i ...more

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Jul 23, 2016 Greg rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: donated

I think I was on a quest to read every Michael Lewis book at the time I read this. Dude. This book was straight awful. I figured Michael Lewis + Silicon Valley = great novel. Wrong. I remember it was vaguely about technology beginning it's rise, but I swear half of the book about some rich douche and his sailing escapade. Do not read. ...more

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Dec 25, 2018 Philip Hollenback rated it really liked it

Shelves: business, history, nonfiction

Quick and fun.

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Jun 12, 2011 Amber rated it really liked it · review of another edition

My least favorite of the in-depth Lewis books, but that's not saying much. Unlike Liar's Poker, which Lewis thought would bring sweeping change by bringing some sketchy practices to light but still rings true, The New New Thing feels dated now, 10 years later. Nonetheless, as someone who understood the late 1990s tech boom only peripherally, this book was insightful, both in terms of those companies' business models (or lack thereof, as the case may be) and some of the relevant personalities. (S ...more

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Nov 22, 2018 Santhosh Guru rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: silicon-valley-story

This my 4th stop on my journey to know more about the history of Silicon Valley. This book is about Jim Clarke and it gives me a perfect lens to view the history of SGI, NetScape, Healtheon (all of which was founded by Jim Clarke) through Michael Lewis' writing. It was a really an interesting book to listen to.

I was really suprised to hear Jim being quite scared off Microsoft as a competitor, but given the timeframe of events and the dominance of Microsoft in the PC market, it makes a lot of sen ...more

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Apr 16, 2015 Richard Block rated it liked it

Hero Worshipping the Devil

Michael Lewis - one of my favourites - often centres his books around heroes - whether nice or nasty - and the New New Thing has his most blatant hero so far - Jim Clark. He is as repulsive as a hero gets, often confusing us with his selfish, ludicrous behaviour. Lewis falls for Clark like a high school sweetheart - blindly in love, yet somehow keeping enough of his senses to avoid being buggered to death.

Jim Clark is a genius, and as such invites our sympathy. Having a Hero Worshipping the Devil

Michael Lewis - one of my favourites - often centres his books around heroes - whether nice or nasty - and the New New Thing has his most blatant hero so far - Jim Clark. He is as repulsive as a hero gets, often confusing us with his selfish, ludicrous behaviour. Lewis falls for Clark like a high school sweetheart - blindly in love, yet somehow keeping enough of his senses to avoid being buggered to death.

Jim Clark is a genius, and as such invites our sympathy. Having an unusual background - A Plainview Texas failure, Clark develops his genius gradually, somehow getting degrees and graduate degrees in physics, computer science and engineering. He develops computer graphics and becomes rich with Silicon Graphics. But he has no time for the money men. He wants to help engineers (like himself) make fortunes. Then he decides the future is in a home device (The TV) that can run your life. He changes his mind - it is the PC and internet that will change life. He starts Netscape, makes another bigger fortune, but is screwed by Microsoft. Clark is a mini devil compared to Gates (if you don't hate Gates by now, read this!). He becomes besotted with money, and falls off the greed wagon. He builds computer operated mega sailboats. He goes loopy. Then he starts Healtheon, an awful internet interface in the US healthcare market. The book ends with him becoming even more ridiculously rich. It is this idiot, Clark, who started the idea of companies getting rich off hype, the new, new thing, and the gullibility of venture capitalists and the stock market.

The book is great when it stays on Clark, but Lewis goes overboard over the boating episodes, which are dull. Normally I like Lewis's weird heroes, like Billy Bean (Moneyball). but Clark is a big, red faced jerk. How he became rich and bored is only slightly interesting, I haven't bothered following him up - like what happened next, mostly because I don't really care about him that much.

Of course, it is a fascinating tale well told, for the most part. Only Clark is not much of a hero - more a rich ass**le. ...more

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Jul 18, 2014 Vinothraj rated it did not like it

A few tidbits about Jim Clark, and Silicon Valley. That's the only good thing in this book. The rest is a bore about his yacht, and the healtheon venture. ...more

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Aug 21, 2014 Scott rated it liked it

Quick read, like most of Michael Lewis' books, but it felt less engaging than others. But, despite this book being published over a decade ago, it's still relevant and provides a lot of interesting context for the beginnings of the tech industry as we know it today.

One main takeaway was how Jim Clark helped to shift the startup value system to favor labor (founders) and their ideas/execution over capital (VCs), but that's only true for some companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) but not for others, ...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Tom rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Lewis, Michael, (1999) The New New Thing, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY. A witty and insightful look into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Silicon Valley, told as a story of the adventures of Jim Clark, a serial entrepreneur. One of the best books ever written on the Valley.

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Apr 07, 2019 Maxim Shekhtman rated it it was amazing

It was a very good book about the internet browser startup craze in Silicon Valley in the mid-1990s. It described the rivalries between Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, which were the two main internet browsers back when the internet was still very new. I believe that a good theme for this book is that great ideas can set the standard for future products. I say this because Silicon Graphics allowed modeling cars, airplanes, and ships. This opportunity lead to dramatic improvem ...more

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Mar 19, 2021 Travis Tuttle rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021

Reading this book in 2021 is like opening a time capsule. Very interesting read, and it was very cool to look up where the people mentioned in the book are now.

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Jan 11, 2018 A Man Called Ove rated it liked it

Shelves: science-sci-fi

This book felt like a stylish AB De Villiers innings on a flat track against a weak bowling attack. It looks good but doesnt feel good as u know it lacks substance. And you have seen much better by AB.
When I read GR reviews of this book earlier, I came across the same complaint :- This was Lewis' weakest, the style is good but it was unsatisfying. But, I read a couple of books by highly rated authors who called "Netscape" as something that really opened the floodgates of the Internet. And so, I ...more

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Aug 30, 2008 Mattaca Warnick rated it liked it · review of another edition

The New New Thing chronicles a few years in the life of Jim Clark, billionaire founder of Netscape and Healtheon. Part biography, part internet success story, The New New Thing doesn't have the same focus as Moneyball or The Blind Side, meandering from Clark's various business successes to his obsession with building a computerized sailboat. The book would have benefited from a stronger narrative thread. Lewis's efforts to coin a phrase ("the new new thing") also fall flat.

Ultimately, Clark is ...more

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Mar 10, 2016 Shivam Sharma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

what Michael Lewis does not emphasize enough in this book (and he should have) is the fact that this is not just yet another story of from rags to riches but the story of just how the mania of the internet bubble came to existence in the 90s and how that influenced not just the traditional investors, wall street bankers and the silicon valley then new venture capitalists.... it shows u how the technicians, the coders, the hackers, the wizards, the architects of the new world who were supposed to ...more

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May 11, 2013 Zarko rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I love Lewis' style of writing and have thoroughly enjoyed this book. My personal interest in Web and it's history was one of the reasons why I picked up this book in the first place and although it follows the career of one man, Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape, I still found it very interesting. ...more

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Aug 11, 2017 Sarah rated it it was ok

It was interesting at points, but could have been much shorter.

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Jan 14, 2015 Stefan Fergus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

3.5* - good, but not nearly as good as Flash Boys and The Big Short. Interesting stuff.

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Jan 20, 2020 Anand Kumar rated it really liked it

I came to the Silicon Valley in 2000, just before the dot.com crash. I witnessed the tail end of the boom and the prolonged bust. You could not spend an hour without someone day trading and making or losing a few thousand dollars each minute. I saw the overflowing BMW lot at El Camino and 237 swell and shrink and littered eventually with slightly old cars on fire sale. Stories of second mortgages invested in the stock market and crazy AMT left a mark.

I was 5 years too late to arrive and probably I came to the Silicon Valley in 2000, just before the dot.com crash. I witnessed the tail end of the boom and the prolonged bust. You could not spend an hour without someone day trading and making or losing a few thousand dollars each minute. I saw the overflowing BMW lot at El Camino and 237 swell and shrink and littered eventually with slightly old cars on fire sale. Stories of second mortgages invested in the stock market and crazy AMT left a mark.

I was 5 years too late to arrive and probably 10 years too young (to handle the H1B age tax), so I keep learning about what make the dot.com boom is through flashbacks. Every now and then I would meet one of the megastars of the boom, like Pavan Nigam and would be dazzled by what they achieved.

I bought this Michael Lewis book a couple of years ago and for some reason never got to reading it. I had a vague idea it was about the dot.com book, but nothing more.

There is a fascinating interview between Michael Lewis and Malcom Gladwell on how their approaches are very different. Gladwell starts with individual stories and tries to generalize it so that it fits a pattern, often diluting the message (and that is why I found "Talking to strangers" different - this is a slightly new Gladwell, learning from his podcasts how to be different). Michael Lewis, OTOH, tells broad stories through individuals, it is always about narrow individuals.

Michael Lewis tells the story of the dot.com boom through Jim Clark, the first entrepreneur to create three different billion dollar startups. I have heard of Jim Clark from Catmull Clark bi-cubic subdivision, which was I did in my first job, using Alias Wavefront Maya on SGI boxes nonetheless. SGI boxes were the sexy workstations we wanted to use, not the boring Sparc ones or the ultra drab VMS workstations (they are 64 bit, my manager would say). Novell Netware was for peasants.

I knew of him as the founder of SGI and Netscape, but I didn't know much about his investments at @Home and later on with Healtheon, or practically kick starting the dot.com boom single-handedly with the Netscape IPO. As I read through this book, I realize, there was possibly no John Doerr without Clark, no Andressen (and Andressen - Horowitz), and certainly no Pavan Nigam or Kittu Kolluri. Heck, there possibly would be no Shri Shriam as well and who knows where that thread would lead you to.

Michael tells the story of SGI, Netscape and Healtheon through a self driving mega-yatch that he builds using three programmers, the yatch's crew who know nothing about the Internet, but are all issued stock options in these companies and become wealthy during the course. Lewis says that the Netscape IPO was rushed because Clark wanted to build the yatch and needed the money :). The ups and downs of the companies are interspersed between the first Atlantic crossing of this yatch when the sensors and the engine fails and the sail is ripped out of the mast. Fun.

It is impossible to think of the Berkeley resident Michael Lewis as a racist, but it made it very hard reading to go through cliches when he described desis (cow infested streets and at 5:30am, they smelt a little like curry). Hmm, fuck you Michael Lewis. You too?

It is a fun read of the dot.com boom. Of how the grand daddy of them all, a high school reject, who keeps reinventing himself, creates an industry and destroys a bunch more and how he himself has to make a deal with the devil, Microsoft to survive. ...more

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May 02, 2020 Richard Seltzer rated it really liked it

If you pick up The New New Thing, don't expect it to help you understand how the Internet business environment works, or how to create a successful Internet startup. For that kind of insight read books like The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, David Weinberger, and Doc Searls, The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond, and even High Stakes, No Prisoners by Charles Ferguson.

The New New Thing is really an old old kind of book, with more in common with biographies of 19th c ...more

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Jan 27, 2019 Ro rated it really liked it

A humorous and insightful look at Silicon Valley in the 1990s, through the eyes of the serial billionaire Jim Clark. I usually don't care at all for these kinds of biographical-type books on rich people, but the amusing and irreverent nature of Lewis' writing makes it more than bearable, especially since there is actual analysis and discussion about the political economy of Silicon Valley startups and venture capital and tech. You actually do learn something about how tech capitalism works by vi ...more

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Apr 28, 2021 Hugh Rawlinson rated it did not like it

The story is just another saga of the same old rich tech billionaires being shits. It’s a long “isn’t he interesting” piece about a guy who repeatedly managed to hack the stock market to enrich himself. Of interest to others, I’m quite sure, so if it sounds like your bag, I would say go for it.

That is, I *would* say go for it, if the text itself wasn’t pretty consistently indulging in horrific stereotyping of Indian software developers. There’s gratuitous talk of rooms “smelling like curry”, whi ...more

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Dec 13, 2020 Melissa Stacy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, nonfiction, books-that-make-life-worth-living, 2020-reads, adventure, travel, humor, finance-history

Published in 1999, "The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story," by Michael Lewis, is yet another delightful work of nonfiction by this author.

This book delves into the life of Jim Clark, a technology entrepreneur who helped launch the age of the Internet boom in the 1990s. "The New New Thing" examines Clark's personal history, his extremely adventurous daily life in the '90s, and his work founding Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon (which soon merged with WebMD).

I laughed a lot. I found ...more

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Sep 01, 2018 Ha Hoang rated it really liked it

Have always been a fan of Michael Lewis and this book did not disappoint! The story about one of the most active mind, “the least happy optimist in Silicon Valley”, from when he started his first company to when he stumbled and when he recovered. Through all ups and downs he managed to stay in touch with his determination and curiosity to fix things in this world.

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Aug 31, 2021 Connor Gustafson rated it really liked it

Michael Lewis delivers (yet again) a thoroughly enjoyable story on the Silicon Valley boom in the 90s. The never ending search for the new new thing is as timeless as the people who chase it are mad geniuses.

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Aug 22, 2018 Fab rated it liked it

Michael Lewis is a great storyteller but this one just didn't grab me as much as some of his other books have. ...more

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Dec 23, 2019 Kara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I bought this solely based on the fact that it was written by Michael Lewis. I had no idea what it was about. Guess what? I loved it. Perfectly written. The subject is Jim Clark (who I barely remember) and the internet boom of the late 90s, which goes hand in hand with the Wall Street bubble created around it (which I recall vividly). I especially appreciated the detail around the sailboat venture; as the daughter of a sailor I know just enough to confirm that Jim Clark is a lunatic!!

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Mar 03, 2020 Bryan rated it liked it

This is the story of Jim Clark and how he started Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon, and myCFO. Clark helped shape the technology boom in Silicon Valley, from the 1970s on through the present. Oh, and he was fascinated with a big boat.

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Apr 17, 2020 Ben Dubielak rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020

Michael Lewis is certainly one of my favorite writers. The story I didn’t find all that enticing, yet he drew me in and it became an easy read with his prose.

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About Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis

10,774 followers

Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, The Money Culture, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Panic, Home Game, The Big Short, and Boomerang, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children.