2 stars for entertainment. 3 stars for dry biographical information about a guy and the computer industry in the 1990s.REVIEWER’S OPINION:I read three other nonfiction books by this author and was fascinated. But this book was not as entertaining. It was dry. It felt like newspaper journalism about one guy and his computer industry activities during the 1990s. It felt obsolete. His 1990s companies are no longer around or in the public eye. The author’s other books were entertaining because they showed people doing strange, outrageous, impressive, unexpected, shocking, stupid, or incompetent things. Those kinds of things don’t happen in this book. The best audience for this is someone wanting to study computer industry history.The author interviewed and accompanied Jim Clark. He interviewed people who knew or interacted with Jim. He read through Jim’s personal materials. The author did not show any criticisms or comments from Jim’s competitors or people who did not like him. It was almost as if the author felt gratitude for access and didn’t want to write anything negative. I could be all wrong here, but I wondered.STORY BRIEF:Jim Clark had a difficult childhood. He joined the NAVY which helped him pay for college. He obtained a computer science Ph.D. He was a concept guy, thinking of new things and starting businesses. He expected others to finish things and keep them going. His company startups included Silicon Graphics, which created 3-D imaging used in movies (filed for bankruptcy in 2009), Netscape (killed by Microsoft), Healtheon (merged into Microsoft’s WebMD), and myCFO (sold to Harris Bank). I added the parentheses information. Some of that happened after this book was published. Jim was behind the first antitrust lawsuit filed against Microsoft. His companies initially made him a billionaire. For several years Jim spent a lot of time creating computer software to run his huge sailboat, Hyperion. The book probably spends too much time on the building and programming of that ship and its maiden voyage which had many computer problems.NARRATOR:The narrator Bruce Reizen was ok, but several times I felt he was speaking too fast – like he was running a race.DATA:Unabridged audiobook reading time: 9 hrs and 25 mins. Swearing language: strong. Sexual content: none. Setting: 1990s mostly in the U.S. Book copyright: 2000. Genre: computer industry nonfiction, biography.OTHER BOOKS:I gave 4 ½ stars to three other books by this author: Moneyball, The Big Short, and Boomerang.
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 Fans2. Tech nerds who want to hear the inside story of SGI and Netscape3. People from the valley who want to recall the gold old daysOther 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.
I really like Michael Lewis' books but reading this one I realised that he seems to always write books about stories that are as yet unfinished. For example, The Blind Side is a good book about football in general and specifically Michael Oher, who last year was just a rookie in the NFL. A significant part of Oher's story was over - his adoption from a Memphis slum by a conservative white upper class family and stardom in high school football - but even now there is a lot of his biography still to be discovered. The Blind Side worked for me because I read it soon after it came out. The same with The Big Short - who know's where the financial system will go after this crash, but it's interesting to know what happened so far right now.However, this dynamic is less pleasing when you read a book that's a decade or so old, as was the case with The New New Thing. It's about Jim Clark, a crazy (seriously) entrepreneur / software developer / sailor / futurologist who founded Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon (which now trades as WebMD) and made billions doing it. The major problem is that it was written in 1999, when Netscape was still a going concern, and deals with the success of that firm plus Clark's creation of Healtheon, which he wanted to take over, unify and digitize the US healthcare system. You could argue that Clark succeeded in his aims for Netscape (knowing even at the time that it's life was limited to the point that Microsoft would finally get its act together) but Healtheon very clearly failed in its mission. Of course Lewis, writing in the late 90s when Healtheon had just gone public and made all concerned millionaires, didn't know it wouldn't really work. The retrospect of the reader isn't the only issue, though: the subject is also difficult for Lewis to pin down in words. The book is called The New New Thing because Lewis concludes that's what drives Clark. He is a man obsessed with the next thing and utterly disinterested in the past. His only links to what he has achieved are his money and a room stuffed full of articles, clippings, emails, manuals and other remnants that were stored by Clark's secretary, now yellowing in a spare room in his mansion. Clark's obsession with the new new thing means that his story doesn't have an ending, or even sub-conclusions. His story has no arc. It's just a series of one thing followed by the next. And so Lewis' book, while engagingly written, witty and interesting as ever, doesn't have the flow that would really grab the reader.
—Damon
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.
—Amber
The New New Thing focuses on the life of Jim Clark, a multibillionaire and founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape, WebMD (acquisition) and more, and obsessed with building the world's largest entirely computerized yachts. The book covers his life from the early 1990s to 2000 and the phenomenal Silicon Valley technology boom. Jim Clark's story is just as much about the environment that permitted him to thrive as it is himself - someone constantly in search of the "new new thing", incapable of looking anywhere but forward and swaying people and entire industries with the promise of wealth and fame - and delivering. This is fantastically written and fascinating look at what happened, and what an outsider's perspective can do. Definitely recommend reading it.
—Way
