PositiveFinancial Times (UK)... at pains to unearth original—frequently fascinating—material that I suspect the PR departments of Facebook and Amazon would have preferred to remain hidden. As such it complements Brad Stone’s Amazon Unbound, published earlier this year, in illustrating how the law and, in some cases, popularly accepted economic doctrine has failed to keep pace with the tech companies ... [an] absorbing book ... the authors portray a company whose engineers and employees have been engaged in continuous rearguard actions rather than devoting energy to the activities that make life stimulating—fresh products, bold ideas and a zesty essence.
Leslie Berlin
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalThe period between the heyday of Ampex and the first presidential term of Ronald Reagan lies at the heart of Troublemakers, a fetching portrait of the less chronicled years of Silicon Valley ... Via sensitively wrought portraits of Alcorn and five others — who, for the most part, are unfamiliar figures except to longtime Silicon Valley habitués — Ms. Berlin tells the tale of how an area once known for companies...gave rise during the 1970s to Apple, Genentech, and their many siblings and progeny ... Ms. Berlin’s accounts of Ms. Kurtzig and Mike Markkula, the first chairman of Apple, reinforce some elemental truths about the sleep-deprived intensity, emotion, stress and operatics that attend the formation of any company — especially in Silicon Valley.
David Callahan
MixedThe Wall Street JournalEven though Mr. Callahan admits that he has uncovered no sinister plot by philanthropists to engage in a conspiracy to reduce the taxes they pay, weaken the grip of government and subsequently seize control of the future by funneling their ill-gotten gains to their pet causes, he nonetheless implies that, somehow, this improbable scenario is now reality ... Mr. Callahan is too decent to tar-and-feather all philanthropists, but he seems to yearn for the day when the state exercises more control over their freedom to roam and the flow of dark philanthropic money subsides.
Harry Parker
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal[Parker's technique] can be disconcerting at first. The opening vignette is of a surgical bandage, and the reader struggles to identify it. But the technique gains steam and gives this highly autobiographical work a welcome degree of detachment ... While Mr. Parker is unsparing in building up to the moment when Barnes is nearly killed, it is his portrayal of what follows that will absorb most readers. This is one of the most intimate and detailed accounts of a wounded soldier’s recovery ever committed to paper.
