Valley of Genius
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Valley of Genius
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Narrated by:
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Pete Larkin
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By:
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Adam Fisher
About this listen
A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley - from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.
Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly - and as aggressively - as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation.
So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius...
Drawing on over 200 in-depth interviews, Valley of Genius takes listeners from the dawn of the personal computer and the Internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. The audiobook interweaves stories of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. These are the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Adam Fisher (P)2018 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic 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, The New York Times best-selling author of Top Dog and NurtureShock)
"Valley of Genius is a blast - it's like eavesdropping on a huge party of all the hackers, thinkers and creators that built our digital world. Every page has some crazy detail I never knew before; I couldn't put it down." (Clive Thompson, author of Smarter Than You Think)
"A fantastic read! Adam Fisher's history of Silicon Valley is compelling and thorough, full of fascinating and inspiring stories carefully curated by someone who truly knows his stuff. Should be on every entrepreneur's desk!" (Ben Mezrich, The New York Times best-selling author of The Accidental Billionaires)
What listeners say about Valley of Genius
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Paul Thompson
- 21-10-18
Persevere with the quote nature or skip
The constant quote nature of the first couple of chapters is rather annoying. However, after these chapters it gets more narrated in nature so is more pleasurable to listen too.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rob Sedgwick
- 03-11-18
Unusual format but works well
This is a very interesting story, especially if you have lived through a lot of it even at a distance as most British readers will have done. The author has basically taken other people's words and presented them as a continual dialogue. Nobody ever says more than a few sentences, but it's a very coherent and continual storyline even though Adam Fisher the writer never adds anything of his own (or very little, nothing that I recall anyway) and every snippet (presumably) was said in a completely different context to the one presented. I have never heard a book in this format before. The narrator doesn't use different voices for each person (there are too many so pointless trying) but he prefixes each snippet with the person's name. It works well and I soon more or less ignore the name and just treated it as one continuous story, which is essentially the idea behind the book.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rushdog
- 19-04-20
Great story let down by narrator
I love these stories of silicon valley. I can't get enough of the maverick engineers that changed business type stories. This book is a set of interviews, like a talking head interview TV show, and is a great insight into what went on back in the early days of tech. The big let down of this book is the narrator, which is a tough job no doubt. Firstly he has an American accent, which I find distracting. It's the monotone, almost robotic way he talks that takes you out of the story of the book. For instance, there's a character called R. U. Serious (silicon valley right?). The narrator has to say their name ever time they have a speaking part in the talking head interview. Maybe they taped him saying it once and just cut it into the recording, but the repetition and the way he said it drove me nuts!
I'm looking forward to buying the book and reading it for myself, although I'm sure I'll have his voice in my head as I read it!
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Dammy
- 16-05-22
Style not for me
As others have mentioned, the structure of this book is quite unusual. For me, I found it frustrating and gave up quite early on. Maybe it would work better in print. It's written basically like a script. Except having the narrator say every speaker's name before every sentence makes it feel really fragmented. I found it impossible to focus on the story and keep track of who was who. I just couldn't get in to it. It's a shame as I'm sure there's some interesting content in there.
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