• Troublemakers

  • Silicon Valley's Coming of Age
  • By: Leslie Berlin
  • Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
  • Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (131 ratings)

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Troublemakers  By  cover art

Troublemakers

By: Leslie Berlin
Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
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Publisher's summary

The richly told narrative of the Silicon Valley generation that launched five major high-tech industries in seven years, laying the foundation for today's technology-driven world.

At a time when the five most valuable companies on the planet are high-tech firms and nearly half of Americans say they cannot live without their cell phones, Troublemakers reveals the untold story of how we got here. This is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so they changed the world.

In Troublemakers, historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the space of only seven years and 35 miles, five major industries - personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic - were born.

During these same years, the first Arpanet transmission came into a Stanford lab, the university began licensing faculty innovations to businesses, and the Silicon Valley tech community began mobilizing to develop the lobbying clout and influence that have become critical components of modern American politics. In other words these were the years when one of the most powerful pillars of our modern innovation and political systems was first erected.

Featured among well-known Silicon Valley innovators like Steve Jobs, Regis McKenna, Larry Ellison, and Don Valentine are Mike Markkula, the underappreciated chairman of Apple who owned one-third of the company; Bob Taylor, who kick-started the Arpanet and masterminded the personal computer; software entrepreneur Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Bob Swanson, the cofounder of Genentech; Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer behind the first wildly successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from an assembler on a factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, the Stanford administrator who changed how university innovations reach the public. Together these troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future.

©2017 Leslie Berlin (P)2017 Simon & Schuster

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What listeners say about Troublemakers

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Do not allow text-to-speech on Audible

It is very clear from the tonality, and many sound elements, that the book is being narrated by a text-to-speech engine, and not a very good one at that (I have validated my impressions with software developers involved in the field, in addition to my own experience). I can't listen to 16.5 hours of this.

Audible: do not allow text-to-speech in your catalogue please. When we buy an Audible title it is to have the satisfaction of having it read by a human with the sensibilities of a human. If we want text-to-speech we can just buy the Kindle version and have it narrated using the operating system's text-to-speech narration service for the visually impaired. I understand that having automated narration is much cheaper to produce, but also understand that the value of the end product is also much, much, much lower.

I hope this is not an indication of things to come.

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29 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

The Robot Uprising Has Begun

Where does Troublemakers rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Most annoying book I've ever listened to.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Troublemakers?

Realizing the book was being read by a robot. A pretty good one, but a robot none the less.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Have you ever wanted to have Julie from Amtrak read you a book? If so, buy this book! If not, and if you'll be distracted by the odd inflections, weird little pauses and always slightly out of sync feeling of text to speech conversion, avoid this title.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Well, I listened to as much of it as I'm ever going to listen to in one setting. All of about 15 minutes worth of it to be exact. I kept hoping maybe it was a joke. "Hey, did you realize that the intro was read by a computer? Ain't science wonderful? Now here's a real person to read the book!" Sadly, that's not what happened.

Any additional comments?

Hire a human and record the book again.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great review of the huge impact of lesser known players who have shaped Si Valley

I have had the good fortune to be a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University for 40 years and have met most of the people in the book as well as Leslie Berlin. I found this a fascinating story of Leslie’s choice of Troublemakers and how immense their impact was out of the headlines of the most prominent and well known players in the Si Valley technological revolution. It is a great story of the vision and moral concerns of many of our early pioneers and I most highly recommend The Troublemakers.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Awful book, terrible reader

First, this book is not read by a robot - it’s just read by a terrible reader who sounds like a robot. In either case it sounds like a robot - and isn’t very good. You can improve it somewhat by increasing the play speed to 1.25x - it makes it sound a bit better.

But why would you want to do anything but hit stop on this book? If you’re a social justice warrior or a left wing nut job or someone that thinks history needs to meet sexual and racial quotas - this is the book for you. If you’re someone that came here to hear a story about the beginning of Silicon Valley and isn’t interested in the authors boring left wing political view - then you’ll probably want to skip this one.

It really is a shame people can’t just write history books without injecting their own politics into everything. I don’t care if I agree or don’t agree, the book isn’t about the author, it’s about the subject - and clearly the author doesn’t get this entry level concept.

Anywho I’d skip this as there are much better and more interesting books available on the subject - and you can get a much better readers as a bonus. But if you love robots and think ANTIFA is great - then this is for you.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great book. Horrible narrator.

A great book about the early days in Silicon Valley spoiled by a narrator who sounded like a robot, mispronounced names, and said "Silicone" instead of "Silicon."

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

robovoice narration

the book is hard to listen to because of the robotic voice, would be better to read

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Terrible narration

The book is actually pretty good, but couldn't stand more than a few minutes of the text-to-speech narration. It's sad to realize that Audible is now using TTS robots instead of human narrators. Sign of the times, I guess.

Do yourself a favor and get the Kindle or the dead tree version.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

either bad recording or robot voice

It really does sound like a robot. Or it could just be a bad recording.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Bad narrator, decent book

The book is fairly interesting but the narration is garbage. Recommend NOT buying the audiobook.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

I failed my book quiz

I should have just read the book. End of story, usually audio books work.. not in a book like this one. Also seemed a little biased towards certain parts of the entire computer revolution it’s self.

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