Geek Silicon Valley: The Inside Guide to Palo Alto, Stanford, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose, San Francisco

By Ashlee Vance

Book Overview

Silicon Valley veterans and newbies alike will want to explore this book that delves into the rich history behind the region that birthed the world's most important industry. Technology journalist Ashlee Vance has captured almost every aspect of the area stretching between San Francisco and San Jose, California, starting with the eager radio and electronics enthusiasts of the early 1900s and ending with the computing powerhouses of today such as Google and Apple. Along the way, the book profiles the people and places that have elevated Silicon Valley to an almost mythic pedestal.

This book delivers Silicon Valley, taking us from success story to failed startup and back again as we drive the roads from San Francisco to Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and San Jose. It's full of profiles of the larger-than-life characters that pioneered the processor, computer, and Internet revolutions. The book's vibrant design includes "Silicon Valley Soundbytes" packed with insider information and trivia, and "Click Here" sidebars, which suggest places to eat, drink, and shop.

Place by place, readers get the inside scoop on all the addresses that count, which include Microsoft research centers; the headquarters of Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle; research powerhouses such as Stanford University, NASA Ames, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the Computer History Museum and The Tech Museum; the Shoreline Amphitheater; the Churchill Club; and many more.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0762742399
• ISBN13: 9780762742394
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Globe Pequot Publishing
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Great book!!

I've been involved with the tech business for 15 years and know my way around the places and companies in the valley. I found this book hugely entertaining and informative. At first look, it seems more like a travel book or specialized city guide than anything else - which is fine and a worthy accomplishment. However, there's a whole lot more....Ashlee lays out the history of the valley and the reasons why it has developed into the technical center of the world. Along the way, he provides easy to understand explanations of the technology and how each invention and advance launched new ventures or opened new markets. Finally, he delves into the personalities of both the key individuals and companies, which, for me at least, ties everything together and makes it a much more interesting and enjoyable read. Highly recommended....

Tech writing... with flair

Like technology? Like history? Like good writing? OK. This is your book. A little bit travel guide, a little bit history and a lot of fun, Ashlee Vance brings his truly unique and refreshing writing style in a book that is required reading for anyone involved in the technology industry. I suspect they will be using this as a text book for some course or another at Stanford, and then Ashlee will become a full professor and his head will get really big and, well, that will be that. But read it anyway.

Packed full of good stuff

This is a great little book. Part historical overview, part travel guide, it's written in the breezy, easy-going style of Vance's columns in The Register, the best of the online IT rags (except that the book has been carefully proofread, unlike a typical Register story). In less than 250 pages Vance has covered almost all of the important historic events and personalities behind Silicon Valley, and provided a great set of tips of places for visiting, dining and drinking. There's even a good list of books and web sites for further reading. I've lived in the Valley for nearly 15 years, and yet learned a fair amount from this book, including several places to visit that were new to me. There were only a few curious omissions: e.g., Halted gets a mention, but Fry's does not; neither does Buck's in Woodside; and surely Frank Drake should be mentioned in the section on the SETI Institute? - but otherwise the text is remarkably accurate, despite having condensed many complex histories, each worthy of a book in its own right, into paragraphs or pages. Vance clearly did his homework. My only historical quibble is with his description of the demise of SGI. I thought it was mainly done in by cheap graphics chips from Nvidia and the like; Itanic was just the icing on the cake. The book mentions his web site and claims additional information can be found there, but so far there isn't anything new. Hopefully that will change over time. Another concern is that quite a bit of the information in the book will date fast; I hope Vance and his publisher refreshes the text (or the website, or both) regularly. If you live in the Valley, visit the Valley, or you just want to know what the heck the place is about, this book is for you. And if you're a geek too, it's a must-read.

Great read

I'm a long-time reader of Vance's articles in the Reg and eslewhere. His articles are always well researched (except when intentionally not!), but it's his biting wit that always brings out the deeply burried tech geek in me. I was hoping for more of the same from this book, and was pleasantly surprised at how much more it offered than I'd hoped. The book is part biography- focusing on the heroes of the tech revolution, part history, and part guide-book. It may just inspire a trip to Silicon Valley. I even enjoyed it enough to recommend it to my 100% non-tech geek mom (who happens to like Silicon Valley).

Money's worth

I've lived in Palo ALto for years and still learned a ton from this book. It's the perfect blend of history, context, entertaining anecdotes and insight. Vance manages to describe many "geek" innovations in layman terms, so that the book was especially helpful for a non-geek like me--someone who knew it was past time to learn about his hometown as well as the most important revolution of the 20th century. Who would have thought something so good for me would have caused me to laugh out loud at several points? Just wait until you read about Google's party plane.