Book Review : Accidental Empires

Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can't Get a Date by Robert X. Cringely is a book dealing with the rise of silicon valley. It covers microsoft, Apple, Adobe and IBM. Cringely also brought us the excellent Triumph of Nerds which covers this book. Although the book was written in 1996, and dated, its amusing, insightful and covers all area's of the rise of the personal computer well, FROM A USA PERSPECTIVE (no mention of Sir clive Sinclair). Cringely also talks about the mainstream companies, both from a hardware and software perspective. Unfortunately, he neglects how many people got into computers (well me); Gaming. I mean why not discuss ID software (well its better discussed in Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture. But I digress. Cringely calling the chapter on Steve Jobs THE PROPHET, really struck a cord. I would really recommend this book if you want to know about silicon valley. I just hope the guys who did in search of the valley read this book. 8 out of 10.