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Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)

Adam Fisher

4.11 · Rating details · 1,094 ratings · 161 reviews

"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and Nurtureshock

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Hardcover, 512 pages

Published July 10th 2018 by Twelve

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Jul 13, 2018 Gary Moreau rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is “genius” on a number of fronts. The first is the writing itself. There isn’t any. With little narrative support the book is entirely made up of individual quotations grouped and stacked around the story of one Silicon Valley venture or another.

At first this gives the impression that the author played more the role of researcher and curator than traditional author. And then it hits you. Fisher, in choosing the quotes and stacking them as if they represent the conversations taking pla ...more

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Jul 18, 2018 Todd N rated it really liked it

I really liked this book, which is sort of the Please Kill Me of Silicon Valley in that it’s an oral history attempting to cover crucial cultural events from different points of view.

Things I liked:
- Hearing the good old stories about Xerox PARC, The “demo,” and Homebrew Computer Club. (Did I mention that I have a mouse signed by Douglas Englebart?)
- Getting a refresher on the founding of the old-timey companies like Apple, General Magic, and Netscape.
- An explanation of first tries “big things ...more

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Aug 10, 2018 Mason Jones rated it liked it · review of another edition

This was an enjoyable book, but it's difficult for me to say how much of my enjoyment comes from having lived through a fair amount of what's discussed. The verbal history-type approach of the book works well, so the story is told by the people who lived it. After an initial sort of overview of "what makes Silicon Valley what it is", the story really starts with Douglas Engelbart and the NASA/SRI/Xerox PARC days, through Atari, and early Apple. I was entertained by the section on the Well, since This was an enjoyable book, but it's difficult for me to say how much of my enjoyment comes from having lived through a fair amount of what's discussed. The verbal history-type approach of the book works well, so the story is told by the people who lived it. After an initial sort of overview of "what makes Silicon Valley what it is", the story really starts with Douglas Engelbart and the NASA/SRI/Xerox PARC days, through Atari, and early Apple. I was entertained by the section on the Well, since I installed the first conferencing software on the Well when it was getting set up, during a summer job while in college. Similarly, the story later about Survival Research Labs was fun since I did the live sound for the show under the freeway that's discussed in the book. The ties between techies, musicians, artists, and writers are touched on, but run deeper than you'd think.

It's easy to read this book and pick apart what was included and what wasn't, because everyone will have their own opinions about what's important. So with that caveat, for me the section about Wired magazine felt unnecessary; pieces of it should instead have been woven into other sections. But in particular, the section about Steve Jobs' death and funeral really doesn't belong in the book. It's purely a memorial, and while nice in that sense, it doesn't help expand on the story that the book is ostensibly trying to tell. What was missing from the book: Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Yahoo!, and especially PayPal. Given the impact that the founders and early employees had on the Valley, leaving PayPal out of this story is baffling. And rather than two sections about Google, some time on Yahoo! would have made more sense due to their early importance.

That said, what's here was fun. Having lived in SF through the beginning of the web, the boom, bust, and successive boom, working in tech and in the arts, it's almost a personal history of the past few decades. But I suspect it will be interesting to those who are newer to the area and/or the industry as well. ...more

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Oct 18, 2018 Blake rated it liked it

A decent index for other great books to read

I just finished reading this, and in a word, it was decent.

What made this book unique and interesting was not so much the content, but the way that it was presented: specifically, the narrative structure - there just isn't one.

Fisher's text is an assemblage of line-by-line quotations from individuals interviewed directly by Fisher, or by other members of the technology journalism community. Before reading it, I was not quite sure what to expect, give ...more

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Jan 01, 2019 Shannon Orton rated it liked it

I put this down 1/3 of the way through and then tried again and put this down again permanently 2/3 of the way through not because of format or content but because of the personal feelings it invoked. I worked in the valley in the 90s and it was overflowing with spoiled, privileged, narcissistic males. Exciting stuff, no doubt.

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Jul 09, 2021 Thomas Dietert rated it it was amazing

An awesomely inspiring book for those who are interested in the history and contemporary heartbeat of the valley. I would highly recommend this book to anyone in tech, and will likely read it again in the coming years. Full of candid commentary on the valley’s most notorious and iconic characters, companies, and products, Valley of Geniuses presents a raw and authentic view into the heart of the valley over the past 4 decades. If you want a good characterization of how software exploded onto the ...more

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Oct 24, 2018 Molly rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars. I don't recommend consuming this outside of a physical paper page-turner; it's essentially a series of quotes from various technorati from over the years. At times it was quite difficult to keep track of who everyone is — this made the lack of diversity in the industry quite painfully obvious — there's an appendix with a list of names and short bios, but jumping back and forth like this on a Kindle is not easy.

I enjoyed learning more about some of the old school technology history th ...more

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Sep 04, 2018 Aaron Calvert rated it it was ok

Fisher's work is too much of a hagiography rather than a thoughtful analysis. It only focuses on the founders rather than the people who work in these companies and the people who live in the valley who have been displaced by the expansion of the tech giants. ...more

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Dec 31, 2018 Pete rated it really liked it

Valley of Genius : The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom) (2018) by Adam Fisher is an interesting book that is a history of Silicon Valley from the late 1960s that is given entirely in quotes by people who were involved in the creation of the technologies involved.

The book is in three sections, the first covering Atari, Apple, Xerox PARC, the second is all about the ‘Hacker Ethic’ and Silicon Valley in the late 1980s and early 199 ...more

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Jun 05, 2021 David Schwan rated it it was amazing

An interesting history of Silicon Valley. Like most modern books about Silicon Valley this one too is less silicon and more software (my job deals with the design of chips). The author conducted a bunch of interviews (and where missing used older published interviews) and cut up the pieces to create in essence a dialog about the subject of each chapter. While much of what is presented was already known to me, there were still many pleasant surprises.

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Mar 10, 2019 Taylor Barkley rated it really liked it

Really interesting and impressive. Filled in a whole lot of gaps in my knowledge about recent tech history. It’s also written in a unique way in that it’s a stitched together series of interview transcription snippets that flow in a chronological order. Highly recommend to anyone interested in tech.

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Aug 28, 2018 Oliver Thylmann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Amazing book, will take some time to finish but something different and something to just quickly read a chapter and then put it down and read the next later.

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Sep 02, 2019 Philip Joubert rated it really liked it

Shelves: tech-history

An oral history of Silicon Valley, as told by the people who were there? Count me in baby! This book is fucking awesome.

This book is unique in its presentation as it largely just consists of different people telling stories about the various legendary companies that make up Silicon Valley legend. What makes that so great is that you really get a feel for how things were really. For instance, Dealers of Lightning, the definitive history of Xerox PARC, reads entirely different after realizing fro ...more

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Sep 24, 2018 Vladimir Slaykovsky rated it it was amazing

One of the best books about the history of Silicon Valley startups.

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Oct 10, 2020 Valdeci Gomes rated it it was amazing

I already read some big tech guys' biographies like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and I like to read and try to understand more about the history of these tech geniuses.

It is not a normal biography or history book, it is more about the guys who created everything giving their point of view, which makes the book much more interesting.

So, in this way, I loved this book. It is funny to understand how everything related to transistors and the internet started in Silicon Valley, from mouse and ...more

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Aug 02, 2018 Rene Bard rated it liked it

I've never read a non-fiction book like this one. It is mostly dialogue that has been spliced together from tech interviews with over 200 experts who worked in and reported on the rise of Silicon Valley as it became one of the greatest tech centers in the world. At first I had my doubts about whether the author's idea to cut-and-paste words would work; obviously, one would have to be very careful not to quote people out of context. Also, done poorly, the end result could be very dull. But to Fis ...more

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Oct 21, 2018 Daniel Olshansky rated it really liked it

Valley Of Genius

My friend’s description of this book is quite accurate: “A collage of quotes of famous people”. It takes a bit of time to get used to the style of “writing” in this book, but eventually you get accustomed to it. It is targeted at individuals who enjoy listening to interviews of CEOs of various tech companies, but covers a lot more history and depth than you’d be able to get anywhere else.

The audiobook is almost 20 hours long, but covers everything from the personal computing rev ...more

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Dec 19, 2018 Matt Cannon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was a very detailed book about the history of Silicon Valley. It went back to the early pioneer days talking about some of the original companies, all the way to current companies, talking about Steve Jobs and Apple from beginning to current, Facebook, etc. I enjoyed the behind the scenes stories such as the painter who painted murals at Facebook HQ for shares (a very good decision and return on his investment) and how much Steve Jobs loathed the “Lisa” named device and how the world famous ...more

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Jul 26, 2018 Vlad rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Really a great read. Love the approach of telling the story through quotes -- some of the quote sequences are devious and clever, especially the sequences where people contradict each other. Some juicy bits, some profound bits, and and also some mundane detail that probably coulda/shoulda been edited out. Overall, a really nice read in SV history.

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Sep 19, 2018 Wendy Bockholt rated it it was ok

I struggled to finish this book. Although it claims to be the history of Silicon Valley, having grown up here it seemed to be missing huge chunks of information. Why so little discussion of the importance of silicon chip manufacturers? Why minimal references to Yahoo, AOL, HP...Interesting tidbits but a “History of Silicon Valley” this was not.

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Jul 28, 2018 Todd Stockslager rated it really liked it

Shelves: business

Review title: Working for Silicon Valley

This is an oral history of Silicon Valley following the model adopted by Studs Terkel, and like his great books on working, the Depression, and World War II, applies this deceptively simple approach to telling a complex story. Like those earlier Terkel classics, the technique works best to uncover the hidden nuances in and about the history we think we already know by using the words of the people who really do know because they were there and made the his Review title: Working for Silicon Valley

This is an oral history of Silicon Valley following the model adopted by Studs Terkel, and like his great books on working, the Depression, and World War II, applies this deceptively simple approach to telling a complex story. Like those earlier Terkel classics, the technique works best to uncover the hidden nuances in and about the history we think we already know by using the words of the people who really do know because they were there and made the history.

I say deceptively simple because recording and transcribing hundreds of interviews doesn't make a cohesive and readable book. Readability requires judicious correction of grammar and syntax from the spoken language to turn it into written language that reads well. It requires choosing the right quotes to retain accuracy while selectively editing for brevity. It requires research and selection of other sources to pick up the voices of those who couldn't be interviewed by Fisher, such as those deceased (Steve Jobs) or unwilling to talk. Here Fisher smartly relies almost completely on other interviews or blogs to maintain that consistent feel and cadence of reading spoken language.

Cohesion requires organizing the content into meaningful topics and providing context and transitions between them. Here the interviewer's skill in framing the questions and controlling the flow of the individual interviews is important, but also in grouping the content into a useful framework. Fisher approaches the material in roughly chronological order, arranged in three broad sections:

Book 1: The founding of the Valley (roughly 1970-1995)
Book 2: The rise of the dot.com era (roughly 1990-2000)
Book 3: The web era of the internet apps (roughly 2000+)

I say roughly because even with a logical framework the wise editor and compositor allows the information to flow to the right place, as Fisher does, and because one minor flaw is the lack of a time line either in the text, as an appendix, or even a bottom margin time line flowing throughout the book that might have helped set the chronological context more precisely. Fisher does include a cast of characters at the back with short biographies, and a small section of photographs of the key characters; keep a bookmark there as you may find yourself as I did flipping there often to refresh your memory who is speaking and why they matter.

And of course the big stories are here, starting with Xerox PARC, where by now it is a well worn trophe that Jobs stole the look and feel of the mouse-driven windowing interface for the first Mac. What is interesting to learn here from those who worked inside of Xerox PARC was that they felt that Jobs was not technical enough to recognize that the real innovation in the lab was the object-oriented operating system underneath the GUI, which Apple did not replicate; while it may seem like nostalgic regret coming from the losers left behind by subsequent history, several of those Xerox veterans talk about how different and better the future they envisioned would be if Apple had. Another surprise for me was how important Atari was in establishing the culture, operating model, and financing model for early Silicon Valley startups. What seemed at the time (I was in my late teens in the late 1970s then) like simple game controllers were in fact some of the first applications of microprocessor hardware, firmware, and distributable software media--and Atari's sudden and dramatic corporate flameout was also an early model for many to follow.

In Book 2, Silicon Valley began to move beyond the Silicon-based hardware to encapsulate the cultural changes that hardware enabled. The WELL modeled online bulletin boards, blogs, and early social media, while General Magic, founded by disgruntled former Apple employees, began to try to build a handheld device that could read and send email, take pictures, run apps, sent text messages, and make phone calls, a decade before the iPhone. While those ideas ran too far ahead of the current technological capabilities and of the company's funding, resulting in another crash landing, the seeds of the future were planted. We also learn here why Wired, a magazine I used to love reading, was so important, and how Pixar united the technology, art, and entertainment fields to uniquely enable computer animation and the making of "Toy Story".

It all builds (the feeling of inevitability only arising because of the recency bias of living through it) to the rise of the internet era and its killer apps: Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and iTunes (after Napster paved the way and uncovered the legal landmines). These "Network Effects", as Fisher titles this section, connected users not just to the internet as we saw in Book 2, but to each other as peer to peer networking transformed searching (Google), shopping (eBay) and social networks (Facebook). While mentioned briefly, Amazon is conspicuously not covered by a separate chapter. It was these distributed connections that opened up the internet economy and started the transformation of the global economic, political, and cultural frameworks that is only just beginning to shatter the certainties we used to depend on. While Fisher concludes with a chapter of speculation by his interview subjects on what the future may look like, I found those of faint interest. Despite, or because of, their history in envisioning, developing, and selling these technologies, I suspect that their visions of the future are likely to fall far wide and short of the changes to come.

But Fisher has provided a fun and necessary look at the recent past that got us to now,and a reminder of how fast and how much our world has changed because of that few square miles of California real estate. ...more

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Sep 30, 2019 EMMANUEL rated it it was amazing

This book is very helpful of understanding the progressive history of the Tech industry. What is a serious issue that I've obtained in insight from this book, is that the progression of the Tech industry is much slower than the industry is made to be developed into.

It is simple enough to understand that the tech industry is beyond "flamboyant" when it comes to marketing their "prestige". The tech industry is notorious on "capitalizing" on the "ignorance" of the everyday person, who doesn't unde This book is very helpful of understanding the progressive history of the Tech industry. What is a serious issue that I've obtained in insight from this book, is that the progression of the Tech industry is much slower than the industry is made to be developed into.

It is simple enough to understand that the tech industry is beyond "flamboyant" when it comes to marketing their "prestige". The tech industry is notorious on "capitalizing" on the "ignorance" of the everyday person, who doesn't understand anything about computer science and the "business" of computer technology.

What is very unfortunate is that this book literally throws the tech industry under the bus. Literally. The book is well written to exemplify the realities of the tech industries most and greatest flaw - "false marketing" and "False advancements of technology".

The book is very descriptive and informative on the histories of multiple tech companies: Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. This informative presentation that the book is very revolutionized in, got me thinking that there really isn't anything new that the technology industry - Silicon Valley, has developed since 2006.

The "marketing" of the industry is very disrespectful to the current millennial generation, whom are waiting for their chance to contribute in advancements in technology, but the current big businesses want to control every single aspect of the industry, even if the "founders" aren't even the reason for the company's world renowned reputation.

It's unfortunate to know that these companies literally utilize their brand's reputation to give them the reputable self - identity they boast in gawkiness. It's quite disgusting at times to meet people who are enthusiasts and supporters of the brand, when they don't even understand the dynamics of the racist, marginalization, profiling, and quite honestly illegal parameters the companies conduct themselves all because of their unrealistic realities and desires to rich and fortune - to that of a Bill Gates.

This book, in summary, is relatively the best book to understand every facet of the history, the flaws, the disgusting factors of the "Valley of Silicon Genius", the ill false opportunities the companies markets to reputable college graduates, the illegal business deals and production, and most importantly, the hoarding of the true reality of the reputation of the tech companies.

I'm glad I read this book, but at the same time, I felt that it was very useless and typical of engineers. It's very sad that these people had false delusional intentions going into the industry, and then when their morals and ethics were challenged, they literally through out those righteous values, and steadfast in great loyalty to heinous character to secure more money and a false deserved life style.

Hope these people are constitutionally justified for their inability to follow standards, ethics, and most importantly - the law. Also, I do question the title and the connotative reputation association. I don't consider these persons "the Valley of Genius"... It's quite embarrassing if I was one of them. Fortunately, I'm not one of these people.

Also, there is this section in the book, along with many other sections that literally requires the government to address legal concerns of these persons. But for now, here is one excerpt.

“Nolan Bushnell: We got sued for nonpayment of our bills. The sheriff had come to attach our assets—our bank accounts—so we had to switch bank accounts every week!”

Excerpt From: Adam Fisher. “Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom).” Apple Books. “Nolan Bushnell: We got sued for nonpayment of our bills. The sheriff had come to attach our assets—our bank accounts—so we had to switch bank accounts every week!”

This is no joke. No person should be able to "flaunt" their entitlement by presenting the reality that they got away with the law. ...more

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May 29, 2020 Grace Lam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-books, quarantine-read

Definitely was not expecting this kind of reading experience when I picked up the book! This is just an innovative, powerful, and mind-blowing way of retelling the familiar tales of Silicon Valley. It is almost like a documentary transcript - each chapter tells the story of a legendary milestone, from the founding of Atari, to the first Apple computer, to the story of Netscape, Napster, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, and more. We all know bits and pieces of these stories, but it is quite something to Definitely was not expecting this kind of reading experience when I picked up the book! This is just an innovative, powerful, and mind-blowing way of retelling the familiar tales of Silicon Valley. It is almost like a documentary transcript - each chapter tells the story of a legendary milestone, from the founding of Atari, to the first Apple computer, to the story of Netscape, Napster, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, and more. We all know bits and pieces of these stories, but it is quite something to read a detailed account as told by the actual witnesses who were in the industry at that time. It took some time for me to get used to the "transcript" format - definitely weird in the beginning, but Fisher did an extremely great job piercing together quotes and made each page flows naturally, as if it is an actual interview and these guys are all sitting in a circle sharing their side of the story!

A few takeaways / thoughts from the book:
1. This has come a long way. As a borderline millennial / Gen Z, shamefully I was not familiar with everything before the dot-com bubble. I grew up with flip phones and iPod, and I still remember the time when I first created my Facebook account. But the story of Doug Engelbart, of Atari, of Xerox PARC - these are quite new to me as a non-programmer and a normal tech gadget user. It was definitely interesting to see how everything comes together.

2. It was fascinating to compare the culture back then in the Valley vs. my friends who are working there now in the "big corp". It has come a long way and in some sense, people joining the industry are no longer hippie hackers or social outcasts. They are ordinary people looking for a decent job wanting to work in THE industry. That loss of culture is quite sad to me.

3. The chapter on the dot-com bubble is fascinating. I was young enough to not actually know what happened other than how disastrous it is. But now that I actually understand the VC industry a bit more as a grown-up and follow the news more closely, it strikes me similarity between what we are seeing now in the funding scene and that of the 2000s. We still see huge sum of money being poured into (random) start-ups which don't even have a prototype yet; story about Wework is just again another timely reminder of how we are also living in a huge bubble right now.

4. On the choice of topic: seems quite interesting to me that Fisher decided to focus a lot on the tech magazine history (Whole Earth Catalog, Wired, Suck etc.) in the book. Maybe they are really influential, but at the same time, many other interesting stories are missing: Nvidia? Oculus VR? Paypal? Or other newer disruptors? Probably this is because Fisher himself is from Wired and hence more credible to share stories about the magazine...

5. Sometimes it does feel incomplete, because we would read about the birth of a company but not how they end (or there are missing stories in between). And since it is focusing specifically on Silicon Valley, it seems weird that the entire history of other Internet giants like Microsoft and Yahoo are wiped out. Like you will get this one line mentioning how someone decided to move to Microsoft and some occasional mentioning of Bill Gates, and that's all. I guess that's a deliberate choice but it just makes me feel like something is missing...

6. Overall speaking, it was a marvelous piece of work. I could only imagine the effort Fisher put in to (literally) cut and paste quotes from each interview. It works very well, to the point it tells many complete stories, and that every line is worth highlighting because they are all so insightful!

7. Wow, that was a long review post! ...more

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Apr 03, 2019 Quinton Baran rated it really liked it

This is an interesting book, with a novel presentation - each chapter is almost entirely direct quotes from interviews, both from other sources and that the author conducted. It includes many of the prime players in the computer industry in Silicon Valley, starting in the 1960's and proceeding to the late 2000's.

The quotes are arranged in a conversational mode, where a quote is made, and then someone else "responds" to the quote. I bookmarked the back section, which has an alphabetical (by last This is an interesting book, with a novel presentation - each chapter is almost entirely direct quotes from interviews, both from other sources and that the author conducted. It includes many of the prime players in the computer industry in Silicon Valley, starting in the 1960's and proceeding to the late 2000's.

The quotes are arranged in a conversational mode, where a quote is made, and then someone else "responds" to the quote. I bookmarked the back section, which has an alphabetical (by last name) listing of almost all the sources that are used, with a short write-up of their contributions. I flipped back to this section often throughout the reading. There is also a picture section, which helped me to root to several of the main players.

The author described their process for creating the quote structure as overwhelmingly manual - laying them out in storybook form on walls, etc. This alone makes the book very interesting. Combine that with a collection of thoughts, ideas, interjection, and intrigue, and we see the development of companies and technology.

My biggest complaint is that I often just found myself getting into the story of a company, and the chapter would end, often with another subject being addressed in the next chapter.

I was surprised to find several players that were involved in different companies (such as Sean Parker with Napster and Facebook, one that I was actually aware of before I read the book).

Many of the events described were central to my life (as I suppose it is for almost everyone of my generation and also many of the younger generations), such as the development of Atari, Apple, Netscape, Google, eBay, Facebook, and Twitter.

There is a very sympathetic tone for Steve Jobs, with conversely a commentary on Bill Gates (when he comes up, as he only tangentially touches Silicon Valley directly, being in New Mexico and Redmond). There is an almost sickly sweet memorize of Steve Jobs in the second to last chapter, with a couple of people giving some counter point that is presented much like sour grapes.

The last chapter is a visionary chapter, discussing many possible and potential technological advances in the coming years, including self driving cars, AI, and fusion power. I found this chapter interesting to read.

Overall, an intriguing historical tome. I am not quite sure how much business application it has (for generating ideas and self improvement). In fact, there is a decent amount of content that casually glorifies drug use. ...more

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Aug 30, 2019 Les Abernathy rated it really liked it

Oral history books might sound like an easy book to write. Lazily copying and pasting the interviews into a readable format. However, once you dive into the final product, it becomes less clear as to the level of difficulty that was involved. The writer obviously has to interview someone. Just type out a transcript of an important person and call it a day. Though this book doesn't interview someone. It interviews everyone. Think of a name that's important to the history of Silicon Valley, and he Oral history books might sound like an easy book to write. Lazily copying and pasting the interviews into a readable format. However, once you dive into the final product, it becomes less clear as to the level of difficulty that was involved. The writer obviously has to interview someone. Just type out a transcript of an important person and call it a day. Though this book doesn't interview someone. It interviews everyone. Think of a name that's important to the history of Silicon Valley, and he/she/they are in here. How much it matters is up to you.

Genius does a good job sectioning the interviews by subject and timeline. For example, the interview with Steve Jobs appears throughout the book because it's cut up among the various topic and places in time he was involved in. The book more or less starts with Atari where most of the early figures of Silicon Valley, including Jobs, got their first tech jobs. Each chapter does a thorough run-through and history of each subject. Doing an excellent job of using interviews to tell an actual story. Which is where the book really shines. Using the voices of the people that were there to explain the beginning, middle, and end of a point in the valley's history.

The only real downside to a book of this format is the length. I couldn't help feeling this book would have been only half as long if the interviews were summed up rather than directly transcribed. Keep in mind I don't view the format as a bad thing. It's more of a point of order for someone else who is thinking of reading it. It might not be for everyone.

My only real complaint is the people in the book can be a little self-serving at times. It's not the book's fault, it's just holding up a mirror, but that doesn't change the fact it's there. In particular, the 'epilogue' had a lot of people smelling their own farts. As someone who has already used their smartphone three times since starting to type this, I really can't argue that Silicon Valley has been really important to our culture and history. But there was too much taking credit for the good while ignoring responsibility for the bad.

All in all, if you're the least bit interested in history and/or Silicon Valley, I would say this book is a must. It's extremely well put together and everyone who was someone is here. It even has Lars Ulrich. ...more

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Sep 14, 2020 Jill Reads rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley, history, business

“Valley of Genius” is an oral history of some of the biggest names that we know (and don’t know) who created Silicon Valley.

Did you play Atari video games? Learn to write papers on an Apple II personal computer? Launch a Netscape web browser to send your Yahoo email? Start using Google as a verb and then proceed to donate your dictionaries and encyclopedias? Use Facebook to reconnect with your high school and college friends? And buy or sell crap from your closet on eBay?

If so, this book is fo “Valley of Genius” is an oral history of some of the biggest names that we know (and don’t know) who created Silicon Valley.

Did you play Atari video games? Learn to write papers on an Apple II personal computer? Launch a Netscape web browser to send your Yahoo email? Start using Google as a verb and then proceed to donate your dictionaries and encyclopedias? Use Facebook to reconnect with your high school and college friends? And buy or sell crap from your closet on eBay?

If so, this book is for you!

Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, Adam Fisher isn’t really an author as much as he is an editor. A genius one at that.

Thankfully, he knows how to tell an amazing story. Because I was hooked on this book for the three days it took to finish it. I now feel like I am one of the tech industry insiders.

Adam figured out how to get people to talk (I mean, really talk). And he put all the nitty gritty into some semblance of order so that it tells the timeline of how Silicon Valley came to be.

This book is chock-full of the who’s who in Silicon Valley, plus all the names of folks who made them look good: Steve Jobs (Apple, Pixar); Nolan Bushnell (Atari); Zuckerberg (Facebook), Larry Page (Google); Jim Levy (Activision); Bruce Horn (Xerox PARC, Apple); (eBay); John Giannandrea (Silicon Graphics, General Magic, Netscape, Google); Bob Taylor (Xerox Parc); Doug Engelbart (Stanford Research Institute); Jack Dorsey (Twitter); Jim Clark (SGI, Netscape); Heather Cairns (Google); Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog); Patty Beron (SFgirl.com); John and Michelle Battelle (Wired); Marc Andreessen (Mosaic, Netscape); Evan Williams (Blogger, Twitter); Pierre Morad Omidyar (General Magic, eBay); Shawn Fanning (Napster), and so many more!

“Valley of Genius” covers a lot of ground. While I was reading, it sure felt like a long book. But it needed to be in order to explain how we got from the launch of the PC to the internet to the iPhone and virtual reality. “It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before.”

I highly recommend this book to engineers, marketing folks, early adopters and entrepreneurs.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Adam Fisher and the publisher for an electronic copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. ...more

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Sep 17, 2018 Peter Sidell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Reading this book reminds me of watching a Ken Burns documentary. It tells the story by jumping back and forth from narrator to narrator as of they were in conversation. The continuity expresses the history.
The book is about what could be called the human side of the foundation of 'geek' technology. Unlike prior telling of this story the technology itself is deemphasized, and the narrative is nonlinear.
Reading it conveys a sense of having been there. I am an older guy from a different part of ...more

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May 29, 2019 Andrew Tollemache rated it really liked it

I loved the format and structure of this book. Adam Fisher's "Valley of Genius" seeks to take a number of pivotal events in the history of technology and Silicon Valley and has each of event told from the POV of the 10-20 people who might have been involved. Based upon years of interviews with the people present at each phase or chapter Fisher has the input of numerous SV luminaries like Jobs and Wozniak, Bill Gates, Nolan Bushnell, Doug Englebart and Stewart Brand. He also has the recollections ...more

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Feb 21, 2019 Frank rated it it was amazing

Shelves: computer-science, history

I have been working in the tech industry for almost 2 years now, and before reading this book, I never really thought about learning the history of how the tech industry, specifically the history of silicon valley, came to be. In college, my peers and I studied computer science, programming late into the night, attended hackathons, studied coding interviews together, but we never talked about the history of technology, nor did we discuss its present and future.

In order to understand where this ...more

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Mar 08, 2022 Lily rated it it was ok

Shelves: library, history, non-fiction

I didn't finish this, as it was quite lengthy and somewhat boring, and it was due at the library. I may check it out again in the future. The back of the book is most informative as it lists all of the "players" alphabetically who basically formed the Silicon Valley. Another section in the back lists the references for the deceased people quoted in the text.
The format is highlighted names and quotes from them. It basically begins with who made breakthroughs in computer literacy as it pertains ...more

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“Kevin Kelly: So when I think of the future of Silicon Valley I see it as still being the center of the universe as defined by having the least resistance to new ideas, and that’s just its cultural history of being tolerant of wild ideas. Lee Felsenstein: Silicon Valley is a state of mind in a generalized physical area.” — 1 likes

“Steve Jobs: The people who really create things that change this industry are both the thinker and the doer in one person. The doers are the major thinkers. Did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years out about the future? About what he would paint or the technology he would use to paint it? Of course not. Leonardo was the artist—but he also mixed all his own paints. He also was a fairly good chemist. He knew about pigments, knew about human anatomy. And combining all those skills together—the art and the science, the thinking and the doing—was what resulted in the exceptional result.” — 1 likes

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