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The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

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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 ingeniously conceived history of the Internet revolution.

349 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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About the author

Michael Lewis

41 books13.4k 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.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 442 reviews
Profile Image for Dianne.
231 reviews45 followers
January 22, 2018
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.
Profile Image for Darwin8u.
1,628 reviews8,794 followers
May 31, 2016
“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 idea men, but the risk men, the development men. It was, and still is, a bit of an aberration in business space and time. This book focuses on Jim Clark, who ended up wet-nursing three different IT start-ups (Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon).

Like his fellow Princeton New New Journalism master, John McPhee, Michael Lewis does a phenomenal job of finding and fleshing out the exact right person to serve as the locus for an even bigger story. This book is nominally focused on Jim Clark, but really is about the technology bubble of the late 1990s. Jim Clark just happens to be a near perfect example of the best and worst of that particular place and time in America's economy.

Not my favorite Lewis. Not because it isn't well written, but mainly subject matter. I'm more of a value man (Graham & Dodd), not a kamikaze investor. The whole idea of the New New thing is both interesting and a bit repellant to me. I love disruptive businesses, but I'm just not a fan of the smoke and mirrors of the early parts of these businesses.
83 reviews10 followers
March 29, 2011
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.
202 reviews
November 26, 2019
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.
369 reviews12 followers
June 7, 2016
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. (Still important: Larry Ellison, John Doerr)

Although I doubt commercial interest warrants, this book could use an updated epilogue, particularly surrounding Healtheon/WebMD, which I have to think does not at all match the original vision.

As usual, very well written and engaging; always the case with Lewis. I didn't find Jim Clark as sympathetic as I think I was intended to, and as a result some of the chapters focused on him personally (especially his flying a helicopter, and sailing his boat across the Atlantic) dragged a bit.
Profile Image for Santhosh Guru.
164 reviews50 followers
November 23, 2018
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 sense now. I really wish I had more story about NetScape or Marc Andreessen or Jim Barksdale. But major focus of the book was around the formation of Healtheon and the big fucking yacht that Jim was building. Frankly the portion around the boat/yacht was actually irritating and less interesting for me.

Overall it was a good listen about Jim Clarke, his background and the context on why he is a big thing in Silicon Valley.
Profile Image for Richard Block.
383 reviews5 followers
April 17, 2015
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.
Profile Image for Vinothraj.
71 reviews
July 18, 2014
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.
4 reviews
March 19, 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.
216 reviews3 followers
August 21, 2014
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, so this book is more a biography of Jim Clark than a complete history of Silicon Valley. Also, while I knew Jim Clark had founded Netscape, I hadn't known much about his involvement with Silicon Graphics or Healtheon (which later bought WedMD), which supports the idea that he really is unique in his sometimes blind grasp towards the next "new thing".
Profile Image for Mattaca Warnick.
68 reviews6 followers
August 31, 2008
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 a man who is never quite satisfied with what he has and always wants more. Reading his story unfortunately left me with the same sense of dissatisfaction.
Profile Image for Tom.
28 reviews35 followers
December 25, 2012
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.
Profile Image for Richard Seltzer.
Author 14 books126 followers
May 2, 2020
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 century adventurers and soldiers of fortune than with books about Internet startups and the new economy.

It relates the wild and unlikely tale of Jim Clark, with lots of gossipy detail and no useful information. His ability to guess what the "new new thing" will be and to make billions from it, is presented as an unaccountable, almost magical power. Wow! he sets a record by starting three multi-billion-dollar companies -- Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon. And our sense of wonder is heightened by the lack of any connection to practical reality, any lessons of experience that someone could learn from this.

This is a good read, a quick read, a book that lovers of celebrity biographies will enjoy. But the same could be said for The Devil Drives: a Life of Sir Richard Burton (the 19th century explorer/adventurer) by Fawn Brodie. "In a world where there seemed to be very little left to be discovered, he sought out the few remaining mysteries. He penetrated the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina at great risk and wrote detailed descriptions. He was the first European to explore the forbidden Moslem city of Harar in Somaliland, which promised death to any infidel. Then he turned to the mystery that had fired the curiosity of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, 'the greatest geographical secret after the discovery of America,' the source of the white Nile. Enduring great hardship, he succeeded with John Hanning Speke in discovering Lake Tanganyika, but just missed Lake Victoria, a failure that embroiled him in controversy and tragedy."

Jim Clark, like Sir Richard Burton, had incredible luck or instinct or both, succeeding against all odds, time and again. But unlike Burton, Clark's life was never at stake and Clark doesn't seem to have shown any interest in the meaning of what he was doing. "Richard Burton published forty-three volumes on his explorations and travels... In addition, he translated sixteen volumes of the Arabian Nights, six volumes of Portuguese literature, two volumes of Latin poetry, four volumes of folklore -- Neapolitan, African, and Hindu -- all of which have extensive annotations that help to illuminate Burton's character." Clark, instead of ruminating on the reasons for his success and the nature of today's wild business world, used his spare time to supervise the building of high-tech sailboats. And his biographer does nothing to make up for the central character's apparent lack of self-awareness.

The biographer keeps his eye on the player instead of the ball and the game. Imagine you are watching a World Series game, and the camera remains focused on Mickey Mantle, and the announcer talks about nothing but Mickey Mantle throughout the game. Every once in a while, the ball happens to come to center field and Mickey catches it. Three times, Mickey comes to the plate, and three times he hits home runs. But much of the time, Mickey just sits on the bench while his teammates bat, and the camera captures his face in extreme closeup, and we're entertained with flashbacks and anecdotes about his personal life. Yes, that's entertainment, but that isn't baseball. And yes, this book is very entertaining, but it gives you no idea at all of the game that Jim Clark played in, or how others could do well at that game.

Particularly telling is the description of how Clark ended up founding Netscape. He is portrayed as having been the mastermind behind the "interactive TV" boondoggle, having convinced the rest of the high-roller business world that the public yearned for movies on demand and prepackaged info to be pumped into homes through high-tech boxes connected to TV sets. Lewis indicates that that was what Clark had in mind when he hired Marc Andreesen, creator of the first Web browser for PCs -- Mosaic. Lewis says it was almost by chance that they turned their attention to the Internet as an alternative.

But the fundamental premise of "interactive TV" was flawed and was diametrically opposed to the Internet style. It wasn't "interactive" at all. The idea was for a small number of mega-companies to deliver high-priced content to passive consumers. The idea was to let them consumers have a limited number of choices -- such as which product to buy and how to pay for it. The idea was to keep the consumer locked in to a single vendor, so that multi-billion-dollar investments could be recouped and yield enormous profits.

The Internet, on the other hand, was primarily about people connecting with other people, people creating their own content and self-publishing it, people creating their own businesses on a shoestring and reaching global audiences. The Internet was about diversity, about a multitude of choices, about the beautiful kaleidoscopic anarchy of millions of people connected directly to one another.

As it turned out, Clark's Netscape gave the Internet an enormous boost, with a new browser that speeded up access to Web pages by about four-fold, without the user having to spend a penny. That made the Web fun and useful even at the 14.4 modem speeds that were common in the fall of 1994 when that first Netscape browser appeared; and speeded up the acceptance of the Web by the general public and by business.

But, if Lewis is right, Clark was clueless about what he was doing and what its impact might be on the global economy. He was just as clueless and lucky as Columbus stumbling upon America.

The other instances of multi-billion-dollar dumb luck -- Silicon Graphics and Healtheon -- were matters of mere money, probably without much long-term significance. But it's Healtheon that most of the book deals with -- a questionable business model, sold to the investing public largely on the reputation of Clark's previous successes, at a time when the market was incredibly gullible. And that part of the story doesn't seem at all adventurous or worthy of our awe.

Here is a man with over a billion dollars in assets investing a few tens of millions of dollars in another idea, and succeeding in fooling the public into thinking that that idea could work, without any tangible evidence, and hence raising the value of the stock to billions. His risk was minimal, and his gain was enormous. That's more the story of a successful swindler than a Columbus.

And once again, the biographer gives us no sense of how the man did what he did, how this Houdini made Internet funny money appear and disappear; and no sense of the game and league in which Clark was just one player; and, of course, no sense of the consequences of his actions had on anyone but himself and his close associates.
Profile Image for Maxim Shekhtman.
12 reviews5 followers
April 8, 2019
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 improvements that benefitted users and consumers.
Profile Image for Joni Baboci.
Author 1 book49 followers
October 4, 2023
A interesting account of Jim Clark's adventures in the nineties including giant sailboats and bloated IPOs told through the always entertaining artistry of Michael Lewis.
Profile Image for Remo.
2,324 reviews148 followers
September 22, 2014
Este libro ha envejecido, no demasiado pero da la sensación al leerlo de estar leyendo un libro de historia, todo lo contrario que con El póker del mentiroso, que sigue hoy tan vigente como entonces.
Me encanta el olfato que tiene ML para elegir los temas sobre los que escribe. elija lo que elija, hasta ahora, siempre me ha parecido el tema más interesante del mundo.
En esta ocasión asistimos a la creación, ascenso y pinchazo de la burbuja de las puntocom desde primera fila, siguiendo la historia de Jim Clark, un emprendedor en toda regla que se forró secuencialmente con Sillicon Graphics, Netscape y Healtheon. Clark es un individuo curioso, con una ansia interminable por hacer cosas nuevas, que triunfó varias veces debido principalmente a la gran capacidad de convicción que tenía sobre inversores y colaboradores. Un personaje curioso. ML dedica un montón de páginas al Hyperion, el yate de Clark, que funciona en automático guiado por 25 ordenadores. La obsesión de Clark por su yate contribuye a que lo veamos como un bicho raro, efecto totalmente buscado por el autor.
En resumen, el libro es bueno, está muy bien escrito, y el tema es interesante. Recomendable.
Profile Image for Civilisation ⇔ Freedom of Speech.
964 reviews264 followers
January 11, 2018
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 decided to pick up the story of Jim Clark, the guy who co-founded Netscape.
Lewis is a man of finance, and in this book we get treated to the finances of the 3 companies that Clark founded repeatedly. After a while you can predict what Lewis is going to say next. The joys of technology or the details of what the companies themselves did to the world are absent. Instead you have minute details of Clark's pet-project ship "Hyperion" which were uninteresting and in the end I found myself speed-reading.
Pick it up if you are a Lewis fan but avoid otherwise. There are better books on Silicon Valley.
189 reviews
January 27, 2019
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 viewing it through Clark's eyes, particularly the clash between the rising engineering stars of the Valley and the money-men of Wall St. and the local VC firms. There is also a marked sense of absurdity in contrasting Clark's total lack of interest in his companies (as opposed to working on automating his big yacht), with how hard everybody around him works to make him rich. Or how willing people are to grovel and fawn at his feet in order to get to invest in a business idea that he's drawn on a napkin that morning, or whatever.

Overall, great book; funny, educational, and surprisingly engrossing.
Profile Image for Shivam Sharma.
18 reviews12 followers
March 10, 2016
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 be building things that they believed in, rather started building whatever made them rich. kinda sad. and then you start to think "oh!!so this is where all the hell broke loose!!"
1 review
May 11, 2013
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.
Profile Image for Sarah.
47 reviews21 followers
August 11, 2017
It was interesting at points, but could have been much shorter.
Profile Image for Anand Kumar.
12 reviews
January 21, 2020
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.
Profile Image for Hugh Rawlinson.
26 reviews5 followers
April 28, 2021
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”, which felt pejorative. Lots of discussion about there being “no US citizen in the room”. In the audiobook I read, the narrator imitates Indian accents when quoting. (There’s also god awful UK and New Zealand accents). I am absolutely not interested in hearing the “it’s of it’s time” take.

Don’t buy this book.
Profile Image for Omar.
62 reviews3 followers
May 5, 2023
Of Lewis's books, this one resonated with me after I haphazardly started reading. I think it's very insightful to look at the Dot-Com Bubble through the eyes of a writer during the time, and make the comparisons to the later tech booms of my generation.

An interesting snippet:

[A] lot of the old rule of capitalism were suspended. For instance, it had long been a rule of thumb with the Silicon Valley venture capitalists that they didn't peddle a new technology company to the investing public until it had had at least four consecutive profitable quarters. Netscape had nothing to show investors but massive losses. But its fabulous stock market success created a precedent. No longer did you need to show profits; you needed to show rapid growth. Having a past actually counted against a company, for a past was a record and a record was a sign of a company's limitations. (85)
Profile Image for Melissa Stacy.
Author 5 books240 followers
December 14, 2020
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 myself moved by Clark's life. Lewis's prose completely delights me. I read the last page feeling satisfied and enthralled by this book. I loved it.

Five hundred tech-billionaire stars. A truly great read.
Profile Image for Shreedhar Manek.
127 reviews80 followers
July 17, 2023
The New New Thing could very well have been written today about the 2020-2021 tech boom. Sure, the dotcom boom was much more of a pop--in size--but the ideology that drove the boom of then and the boom of now is pretty much the same.

In TNNT, Michael Lewis follows around Jim Clark, the founder of more than one billion dollar companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon. Fascinating to read about Lewis going with him on his experimental boat, and also taking the risk of getting on to a helicopter flown by Clark (even if under supervision).

Lewis gives us an insight into the excesses of Silicon Valley, the competition, into the kind of people that thrive there. Jim Clark cannot focus on a single thing, he's always in the search of the "new new" thing. He's not a person you'd want to hang out with on a Friday evening, but if you got the chance to hang out with him on a Monday, he might just make you very rich.

Lewis takes us inside Clark's boat, some court proceedings of Netscape's conflict with Microsoft, the initial days of Healtheon. At times, Lewis seems to be the only one self-aware about the bizarre. How can Healtheon, with no product and no revenue, with employees with zero idea about American healthcare, promise to revolutionise it and be valued at more than a billion dollars? What is the diamond that first failed to enamour and then suddenly really enamoured investors?
Profile Image for Ha Hoang.
205 reviews32 followers
September 2, 2018
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.
September 1, 2021
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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