The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest M

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		The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest M
		The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest M

基本信息·出版社：Three Rivers Press
·页码：368 页
·出版日期：2000年07月
·ISBN：0812990730
·条形码：9780812990737
·装帧：平装
·开本：0开 Pages Per Sheet/32
·正文语种：英语
·外文书名：阴谋对付比尔盖茨

内容简介 To understand the magnitude of Bill Gates, one must first understand the people who hate him, most of whom suffer from an acute case of "Bill Envy."

The Plot to Get Bill Gates is the true, hilarious story of a loosely knit cabal of Silicon Valley's wealthiest and most successful leaders and their quest to defeat the richest man in the world. These leaders are known within Microsoft as Captain Ahab's Club for their self-destructive fixation with harpooning the Great White Whale of Redmond, all two hundred pounds and $50 billion of him. Acclaimed journalist Gary Rivlin tells their tale as a high-tech variation on Moby-Dick, and by taking us deep inside the world of Gates and his enemies, he vividly reveals their consuming obsession.

Lead players in The Plot are Lawrence Ellison of Oracle, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, Ray Noorda of Novell, Marc Andreessen and James Barksdale of Netscape, Philippe Kahn of Borland, and Gary Kildall (the unsung programmer who could have been Gates), with special guest appearances by venture capitalist John Doerr, consumer activist Ralph Nader, zealous attorney Gary Reback, and the Fraternal Order of Antitrust Lawyers. The author describes each man's ill-fated attempt at besting Gates, who seems to become bigger, hungrier, and more dangerous after each attack.

Rivlin also conducts an in-depth investigation of Gates himself, examining each crucial step in the ascension of the slope-shouldered billionaire with bad hair and unearthing the most telling details to explain why Gates is so rich and we aren't. (The short answer: monomania.) Rivlin concludes with an illuminating analysis of Microsoft's latest upgrade of its CEO, Gates 3.1, which seems to be operating with fewer bugs than previous incarnations.

Gary Rivlin's reporting is irreverent and intellectually independent, free of the romanticized portraits and techno-hype perpetuated by many in the media. As an award-winning political reporter, he brings a fresh perspective to the avaricious, bloodthirsty behavior of these new icons. The result is a savagely funny morality play about big business at the century's end.
作者简介 Gary Rivlin is the author of two acclaimed works of nonfiction, Drive-By and Fire on the Prairie: Chicago's Harold Washington and the Politics of Race, winner of the Carl Sandburg Award for Nonfiction and the Chicago Sun-Times Nonfiction Book of the Year. He has reported on city politics for The Chicago Reader and the East Bay Express. His work has appeared in many publications, including The Nation, Upside, In These Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1993, he received the San Francisco Bay Area Media Alliance's Print Journalist of the Year Award for his reporting on urban violence. He lives in Oakland and is editor of the East Bay Express.

媒体推荐 Review
"What a sweet book this is---so shrewd about the larger-than-life personalities who rule the world of computer software; so joyously written; so filled with both rollicking tales of the software wars and powerful insights about the nature of high-tech competition. I learned far more than I thought I would from reading The Plot to Get Bill Gates. And I had an awfully good time doing so."
--Joseph Nocera, editor-at-large, Fortune

"In gripping, fast-paced style, Gary Rivlin takes us inside the business battle of the new century, the relentless pursuit of Bill Gates by his powerhouse rivals. With meticulous detail and keen intellectual independence, Rivlin takes us on an amusing and provocative trip inside the world of Gates and various anti-Gates conspiracies. Rivlin is a resourceful reporter, a passionate writer, and a marvelous storyteller who offers a fresh and exciting look at today's cyber-barons."
--Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune

"Gary Rivlin does for the nineties what Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers did for the sixties, memorably chronicling the pretension and foibles of era-defining individuals with a very sharp quill. The Plot to Get Bill Gates combines impressive reporting, original analysis, and a keen eye for telling details that illuminate a larger story of mass obsession. This is Melville updated for our times, with a Politically Incorrect twist of humor."
--Randall Stross, author of eboys

编辑推荐 Amazon.com
Money and success do strange things to people, especially when they're not their own. Perhaps no better example of this phenomenon is Silicon Valley's obsession with Microsoft and its leader, Bill Gates, an obsession that Gary Rivlin examines with great relish and in great detail in The Plot to Get Bill Gates. Rivlin discovers a "king-sized obsession among one-dimensional workaholics" that's known in the industry as "Bill Envy," a phenomenon that has destroyed companies, inspired dozens of jokes (e.g., "How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None. Bill Gates will just redefine DarknessTM as the new industry standard"), and for some raises the possibility of a wider conspiracy that pits Microsoft against everyone else--Silicon Valley, the Justice Department, even Ralph Nader.
From Gates's awkward adolescence to his position as the world's richest man, Rivlin takes a deep look into his character and uses him as a means to reveal the character of those that oppose him, a drama that he likens to that in Moby Dick. Unlike other books about Microsoft (The Microsoft File, How the Web Was Won, Barbarians Led by Bill Gates), Rivlin's tries not to take sides. Nevertheless, the Captain Ahabs (Ray Noorda, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, among others) come off looking less flawed, but certainly not as smart or as calculating or as dangerous as the white whale (Gates). While most of this material will be familiar to anyone who follows Microsoft and its competitors, Rivlin manages to keep the pages turning with dozens of entertaining anecdotes and stories about Gates and his enemies. The Plot to Get Bill Gates is a must for anyone who loves a good old-fashioned high-tech food fight. --Harry C. Edwards

专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
Gates bashing has by now become an obsession in some parts of the world (at least in Silicon Valley, where rival tycoons resent him, and in the Justice Department, where antitrust lawyers burn the midnight oil). Though Rivlin (Drive-By; Fire on the Prairie) takes his shots at Gates, he also takes aim at his rivals, the heads of companies like Novell, IBM and Sun. He chalks up hatred of Gates and Microsoft to a "king-sized obsession among one-dimensional workaholics who'll do practically anything to win"Amaking Gates haters sound a lot like the tyrannical drone they themselves make Gates out to be. Rivlin has little tolerance for Gates's famous arrogance and explicitly takes apart Gates's reputation as a coding whiz. On the other hand, he is frustrated with Gates's complaining competitors, seeing them as doing little more than making business personal. Rivlin's writing, never less than lively, is sometimes truly funny. His thesisAthat the little guys banded together to slay the Microsoft dragon when they should have been minding their own businessesAis persuasive. He has succeeded in writing a disinterested account of the software wars of the 1990s: this is neither a defense of Microsoft nor a screed against Gates. But it is also a little uninterested, as well. Rivlin appears more concerned with repeating the epithets the moguls have flung at each other than with the substance of their business. As entertaining as the book is, many readers will find Rivlin's pox-on-all-their-houses attitude too smug by half. Author tour. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
In a world of high finance and sometimes large egos, it's easy to hate the richest man in the worldAand many in that world have no trouble passionately hating Bill Gates. Bay Area journalist Rivlin has covered this world for several years, and he draws on this experienceAincluding a press visit to Gates's homeAin this account of how Gates has drawn attacks from obsessed competing executives, users of his products (and adamant nonusers), consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and the U.S. Department of Justice. The book's scope is broader than the title implies; it treats a number of Microsoft's competitors in some depth and provides some recent history of the computer industry. Throughout, Rivlin entertains with a light writing style and the promised irreverence, concluding with a brief set of jokes about Gates and Microsoft. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.AA.J. Sobczak, Covina, CA

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