
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...
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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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What a journey... Amazong
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As told by the ones who made it happen
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If you're interested in the valley, start ups, unicorns, or the history of the modern tech era, this is probably a good place to start. I've heard a decent portion of the information in this book, but never in direct quotes from the participant's themselves, or framed as well in (mostly) chronological order.
Interesting Format
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First person account of how we got to here
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The production quality however was poor, jarring and painful. Getting through the early chapters was an absolute torture. Poor audio editing plagues the book, with abrupt and badly done audio corrections often ruining the experience.
Rivetting content, terrible production
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that being said, there's a lot of great content. I'd highly recommend this book.
A great, thought provoking work
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Not suitable for audiobook
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Annoying to listen to
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And an excellent one he is. The vignettes are masterfully selected and stitched together with the relevant interesting voices.
The format -constant POV switching read by a lone voice- is not ideal for audible and the vocal patch in’s on correction seem to have not been mastered in competently.
The content however is a must for any technologists or forward thinking would be mover out there. We’ve all got to learn our History first and this brings all the right Palo Alto tales- 18hrs worth for just one credit!
It listens almost like a screenplay
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great story, would have been better as an intervie
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