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Valley of Genius
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
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)
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The definitive inside account of the file-sharing revolution that overthrew the music industry, All the Rave reveals the family betrayal, greed, and mismanagement that hijacked one the most fundamental innovations of the Internet era. Named one of the three best books of 2003 by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., All the Rave has been out of print until now and unavailable in most formats. Author and veteran technology journalist Joseph Menn also wrote 2010's Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet.
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The Far-reaching Karma of Napster
- By Susie on 04-29-13
By: Joseph Menn
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Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs
- By: Carmine Gallo
- Narrated by: Sean Mangan
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, best-selling author Carmine Gallo reveals the qualities that make the Apple co-founder the most innovative leader in business today. Each principle is backed with research, quotes, and first-person interviews with experts and business leaders, as well as specific ideas for applying those principles to every business, large or small.
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awful
- By Thomas on 10-15-11
By: Carmine Gallo
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The Art of Innovation
- Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
- By: Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman - contributor, Tom Peters - foreword
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.
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This is an old book!
- By EPR review on 01-05-17
By: Tom Kelley, and others
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Eat People
- An Unapologetic Plan for Entrepreneurial Success
- By: Andy Kessler
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Here's how entrepreneurs find the next big thing-and make it huge. The era of easy money and easy jobs is officially over. Today, we're all entrepreneurs, and the tides of change threaten to capsize anyone who plays it safe. Taking risks is the name of the game - but how can you tell a smart bet from a stupid gamble? Andy Kessler offers 12 surprising and controversial rules for these radical entrepreneurs.
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One of the best business books!
- By Wayne on 11-24-15
By: Andy Kessler
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The New New Thing
- A Silicon Valley Story
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Bruce Reizen
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.
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A fun book about Jim Clark
- By Horace on 07-07-10
By: Michael Lewis
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The Starfish and the Spider
- The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
- By: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.
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Centralized and decentralized models
- By Chan Meng on 12-07-07
By: Ori Brafman, and others
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Who Was Steve Jobs?
- By: Pam Pollack, Meg Belviso
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Steve Jobs, adopted in infancy by a family in San Francisco, packed a lot of life into 56 short years. In this Who Was...? biography, children will learn how his obsession with computers and technology at an early age led him to cofound and run Apple in addition to turning Pixar into a groundbreaking animation studio. A college dropout, Jobs took unconventional steps in his path to success and inspired the best and the brightest to come with him and "change the world".
By: Pam Pollack, and others
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Googled
- The End of the World as We Know It
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Googled, esteemed media writer and critic Ken Auletta uses the story of Google's rise to explore the inner workings of the company and the future of the media at large. Although Google has often been secretive, this book is based on the most extensive cooperation ever granted a journalist, including access to closed-door meetings and interviews with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt, and some 150 present and former employees.
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Audio production could have been better
- By David on 11-12-09
By: Ken Auletta
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Free Prize Inside!
- The Next Big Marketing Idea
- By: Seth Godin
- Narrated by: Seth Godin
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Purple Cow taught marketers the value of standing out from the herd, which is how companies like Krispy Kreme and JetBlue made it big. But it left readers hungry for more: How do you actually think up new Purple Cows? And how do you get them adopted by risk-averse Brown Cow companies? Free Prize Inside delivers those answers and much more.
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Another gem from Seth
- By Daryl on 12-29-09
By: Seth Godin
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Dave Barry in Cyberspace
- By: Dave Barry
- Narrated by: Shadoe Stevens
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When Dave Barry goes mano a mano with the Information Superhighway, it's guaranteed to be a rip-roaring adventure. This self-proclaimed computer geek and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist starts with the motto, "Never read the instructions," and slides from there into the world of hardware, software, Windows 95, and the critical issue of RAM ("the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM").
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Disappointing and Dated
- By Alan Rither on 09-13-04
By: Dave Barry
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The World Is Flat
- Further Updated and Expanded
- By: Thomas L. Friedman
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations?
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If you like cliches...
- By Jonathan Shultz on 09-08-07
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Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There, she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government - and always had been - and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was.
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Mostly good, but also irrating
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The Big Score
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Worthwhile and engaging.
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The Soul of a New Machine
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Computers have changed since 1981, when Tracy Kidder memorably recorded the drama, comedy, and excitement of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.
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Reading this book changed my life
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In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.
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A fun book about Jim Clark
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Google It
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin started out as two Stanford college students with a wild idea: They were going to organize the world’s information. From that one deceptively simple goal, they created one of the most influential and innovative companies in the world. The word google has even entered our vocabulary as a verb. Now, find out the true history of Google - from its humble beginnings as a thesis project made out of “borrowed” hardware and discount toys through its revolution of the world’s relationship with technology to a glimpse of where they might take us next.
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Irritating
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The Founders
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Today, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twenty-first-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired.
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Wonderful, Engaging & Insightful
- By Ismael Becerra on 02-26-22
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The Code
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Mostly good, but also irrating
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Worthwhile and engaging.
- By Materialsguy on 05-12-23
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Reading this book changed my life
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The New New Thing
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In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.
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A fun book about Jim Clark
- By Horace on 07-07-10
By: Michael Lewis
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Google It
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Larry Page and Sergey Brin started out as two Stanford college students with a wild idea: They were going to organize the world’s information. From that one deceptively simple goal, they created one of the most influential and innovative companies in the world. The word google has even entered our vocabulary as a verb. Now, find out the true history of Google - from its humble beginnings as a thesis project made out of “borrowed” hardware and discount toys through its revolution of the world’s relationship with technology to a glimpse of where they might take us next.
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Irritating
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Today, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twenty-first-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired.
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Once upon Atari
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Once upon Atari is an intimate view into the dramatic rise and fall of the early video game industry, and how it shaped the life of one of its key players. This book offers eye-opening details and insights delivered in a creative style that mirrors the industry it reveals. An innovative work from one of the industry’s original innovators.
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Awesome
- By Aaron Valdes on 07-22-23
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Samsung Rising
- The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
- By: Geoffrey Cain
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
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Based on years of reporting on Samsung for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, from his base in South Korea, and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows. Seen for decades in tech circles as a fast follower rather than an innovation leader, Samsung today has grown to become a market leader in the United States and around the globe.
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Misleading title
- By Kevin on 02-25-21
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How the Internet Happened
- By: Brian McCullough
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
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The Internet was never intended for you, opines Brian McCullough in this lively narrative of an era that utterly transformed everything we thought we knew about technology. In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first "dotcom".
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Critically empty history
- By Keith on 12-19-20
By: Brian McCullough
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Losing the Signal
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Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.
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Fascinating
- By Gerardo A Dada on 09-05-15
By: Jacquie McNish, and others
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Palo Alto
- A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
- By: Malcolm Harris
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In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the "tragedy of the commons," racial genetics, and "broken windows" theory.
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Yes, it's Marxist. it's also good.
- By Alex halladay on 02-15-23
By: Malcolm Harris
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When Genius Failed
- The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Roger Lowenstein
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- Abridged
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Roger Lowenstein, the bestselling author of Buffett, captures Long-Term's roller-coaster ride in gripping detail. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein crafts a story that reads like a first-rate thriller from beginning to end. He explains not just how the fund made and lost its money, but what it was about the personalities of Long-Term's partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the late-nineties culture of Wall Street that made it all possible.
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When Genius Failed
- By Sean on 12-17-08
By: Roger Lowenstein
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Facebook
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- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
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The definitive history, packed with untold stories, of one of America’s most controversial and powerful companies: Facebook. Based on hundreds of interviews from inside and outside Facebook, Levy’s sweeping narrative of incredible entrepreneurial success and failure digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.
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Not a history of Facebook
- By Rodney on 12-02-20
By: Steven Levy
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The Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley
- By: John McLaughlin, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: John McLaughlin
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- Original Recording
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In 10 episodes, The Entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley reveals the fascinating story of entrepreneurship, invention, and innovation in the most risk-friendly place on the planet. Bringing together three decades of research and interviews, McLaughlin takes you inside the minds of the founders of giants like Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Intuit, and other revolutionary companies. It's these innovators themselves who can bring the stories of Silicon Valley to life better than anyone, and in their own words they’ll recount their struggles, their successes - and even their failures.
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At least the interviews were good.
- By PictureGuy on 06-12-21
By: John McLaughlin, and others
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Tracers in the Dark
- The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
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Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money.
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Could not put this down
- By Mike Reaves on 01-28-23
By: Andy Greenberg
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Doom Guy
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Doom Guy: Life in First Person is the long-awaited autobiography of gaming’s original rock star and the cocreator of DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein—some of the most recognizable and important titles in video game history. Credited with the invention of the first-person shooter, a genre that continues to dominate the market today, he is gaming royalty. Told in remarkable detail, a byproduct of his hyperthymesia, Romero recounts his storied career.
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Intimate stories of gaming history in First Person
- By Emyli on 07-28-23
By: John Romero
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Steve Jobs
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 25 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
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Good Biography, Fine narrator
- By Chris on 10-27-11
By: Walter Isaacson
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Walt Disney: An American Original (Commemorative Edition)
- By: Bob Thomas, Christopher Miller, Jeff Kurtti, and others
- Narrated by: Jason Culp, Xe Sands, Christopher Miller, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Walt Disney is an American hero. From Mickey Mouse to Disneyland, he changed the face of American culture. His is a success story like no other: a man who developed animated film into an art form and made a massive contribution to the folklore of the world. After years of research, respected Hollywood biographer Bob Thomas produced a definitive biography of the man behind the legend of Disney: the unschooled cartoonist from Kansas City who when bankrupt on his first movie venture and developed into the genius who produced unmatched works of animation.
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The variation in narration was off-putting though the Walt Disney Story is amazing!
- By Reading Grandma on 09-18-23
By: Bob Thomas, and others
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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- ElJaws
- 07-27-18
Difficult
The format of each speaker being announced before a quotation makes for a poor audiobook experience.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Avery Dague
- 07-21-18
Annoying to listen to
The way the book was put together does not make it easy to listen to. Each chapter is just a bunch of people, each with their own quote, put together in a way to try to tell a fluid story.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Rob
- 07-21-18
this book is a train wreck
having worked in silicon valley for 20+ years, i expected to enjoy this book. i know or have known a few of the people interviewed for the book. in spite of that, i just did not appreciate the approach, the input or the conclusions. for me, it reflects very little of what i know to be silicon valley. further, this is not a book, exactly. it is basically a transcript of interviews with some talented people, some of whom did not/do not work in the valley. it is impossibly difficult to follow as the reader just yells out a name and then recounts their words.
in the preface, the author spoke of how he had literally cut up transcribed interviews and taped them into a layout. that is what it sounded like to me. no cohesive anything. just constant abrupt lines as if one is table reading a play but with only one actor.
i am embarrassed for the author and reader.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Highlander 740
- 07-26-18
Very difficult listen
The book is more like a transcript identifying the speaker before each sentence, so you dont get a flowing story. It is very painful to listen to. This could be a great book with interesting stories but misses the opportunity.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Sara
- 08-02-18
Great story, but terribly produced.
Super hard to listen to. the narrator was dubbed often with someone else at a different volume. just terrible.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Drew Roberts
- 07-22-18
Fun Perspective
After you get comfortable to the style of constant quotes, it's a personable way to hear about the start of the internet and these companies. Even if you know a lot about them, it's a fun perspective and a lot of interesting details are mentioned. The author does a good job with the flow of the quotes and I blitzed through it in a day.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jonathan Reiss
- 03-26-19
Great History of the Rise of Silicon Valley
This is an amazing oral history of the rise of silicon valley and the role that computer and phone tech have played in our lives - especially fascinating is the early evolution of Xerox Parc/Apple and the rise of the personal computer - then the rise and development of the cell phone. While some people have commented on how its annoying to follow all the characters - they miss the point - the book is structured to give these different perspectives - and hence you need to have those names - and if you go with it - its rewarding. Also I read the book simultaneously on whisper sync and that was a great way to go. Again if you are interested in the origins of the PC/Mac and cellphones and the culture of Silicon Valley and how that culture gave birth to these innovations- this is for you.
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1 person found this helpful
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- David C.
- 02-08-19
5 for Stories and Compilation: Great Listen
Criticisms would be too much Apple/Jobs, not enough chips and hardware, but stories are facinating.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Sam Kennedy
- 11-26-18
Good book, not so great performance
The material was good but the performance was choppy at best. Nature of the material introduced a lot of edits and you can hear that with the book. The sound is uneven with the edits and at times even jarring. In spite of the production problems, still enjoyed the book.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Ian P Cook
- 10-14-18
Unlistenable
The whole book is just a series of quotes. Read it physically. The audiobook is unlistenable.
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