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Like other "totemic firms" of recent years, Microsoft attained astounding power and profitability in stunningly short order--along with a slew of rivals who desperately wanted it broken into less threatening pieces. Few really believed it would happen when the U.S. Department of Justice first began looking into its operations, however, which made the eventual judgment against the company even more significant. "The humbling of Microsoft is the last great business story of the 20th century and the first great riddle of the 21st," writes John Heilemann in Pride Before the Fall, his insightful examination of the epic antitrust battle that began as a Wired magazine cover story. "There are fancier ways of putting it," he adds, "but the riddle is: how did it happen?" In the pages that follow, Heilemann examines the behind-the-scenes machinations that drove United States v. Microsoft, based largely on exclusive interviews he conducted with Bill Gates and his top lieutenants, Justice Department prosecutor Joel Klein, special trial counsel (and lead Democratic Florida recount litigator) David Boies, Intel chief Andy Grove, Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy, and various "unknown soldiers" who arguably played the biggest role of all. With Microsoft's future still uncertain, Pride helps reset the tone in a case that will shape our high-tech future. --Howard Rothman
Book Description
John Heilemann's Pride Before the Fall uncovers the secret history of the antitrust trial that shook an economy: United States v. Microsoft. Drawing on years of reporting -- including extensive interviews with Gates and other top Microsoft executives, Justice Department trustbuster Joel Klein, superlitigator David Boies, Intel chief Andy Grove, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, and scores of lesser-known but pivotal players -- Heilemann lays bare the chaotic confluence of forces that shattered Microsoft's aura of invincibility and the climate of fear that held an industry in thrall.
Based on an acclaimed Wired magazine cover story, Pride Before the Fall is packed with rich personalities, dramatic scenes, and explosive revelations. It tells the stories of the largely unknown men and women who turned their opposition to Gates's company into a crusade, laboring for years to persuade the government to indict Microsoft for its monopolistic practices. Pride Before the Fall explains in compelling detail how the high-tech kingpins whose businesses Gates had tried to destroy or strong-arm (Netscape, Apple, Sun, and even Intel) worked in secret to help the Justice Department bring down Microsoft. It explores the lasting damage the trial has inflicted on the first great empire of the Information Age. And Heilemann offers a vivid and sometimes shocking portrait of Gates himself -- describing a man who in 1993 told his friends, "I have as much power as the president," only to be thrown into rage and depression a few years later, when he discovered just how wrong he'd been.
Like a figure from Greek tragedy, Heilemann writes, Gates sowed the seeds of his own undoing. From lengthy visits to Redmond before, during, and after the trial, Heilemarnn paints a picture of a culture that can only be described as the Cult of Bill, a culture that had few limits when it came to eviscerating the competition, a culture that grew out of Gates's fiercely single-minded determination to keep Microsoft from meeting the fate of a company that he had studied, admired, rivaled, and then surpassed: IBM. But when that culture came under scrutiny on Capitol Hill, in the halls of the Justice Department, and in the courtroom of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, it provoked a verdict far harsher than anyone could have predicted -- and guaranteed for Microsoft the very fate that Gates had struggled so desperately to avoid.
With Pride Before the Fall, John Heilemann confirms his reputation as one of Silicon Valley's most talented and respected journalists. Years of inside access to the Valley's boardrooms have given him a unique understanding of the technology industry, just as his years as a reporter in Washington have informed his grasp of the political currents that swept the U.S. government into a battle it never wanted to fight. But what sets Pride Before the Fall apart isn't simply Heilemann's mastery of the dynamics of business, public policy, and the law. This superbly gifted writer has also given us a revelatory tale of human ambition and human frailty -- a timely saga of arrogance, ruthlessness, and revenge.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent book on Microsoft anti-trust trial.......2007-05-21
This book puts out a lot of factual information while keeping the read interesting. I've used this in a college ethics class, and most students liked it. I know of an attorney's office that used it to familiarize their staff with the case.
The book is biased against Microsoft, but shows enough of their side that it doesn't come across as a shallow review. Lot's of interviews keep the book interesting.
An excellent analysis of the case.......2001-08-26
Heilemann has done a fabulous job with this book. The Wired article was really gripping and the full length book is just as difficult to put down! It really makes you wonder what they're thinking in Redmond - at the end of the book I couldn't help feeling that Gates (as Heilemann presents him) seems a lot like Mr. Burns in the Simpsons episode where Lisa teaches him about recycling and he ends 'recycling' all the fish in the sea for livestock feed. He couldn't figure out why he was wrong and Gates seems to have the same difficulty.
whiny.......2001-06-09
This book is more of a whine session than an informative look into the microsoft case. Poor writing and questionable facts make this book impossible to read. Save your money!
Save Your Money.......2001-05-15
This book was more than "based on" the Wired article, it was the Wired article. I read both the article and the book, and in my opinion there was very little added to the book. I would suggest buying the Wired Magazine that had this article, ... .
Excluding that, the book was well written and entertaining, but somewhat disappointing. The amount of access the author had provided great visibility into the trial, but I felt the author squandered that information. There was very little analysis, and often the author missed humorous/interesting snippets that other books/articles had picked up (e.g. in "The New New Thing" and Upside's news coverage of the trial).
This book felt more like a synapse or a chronology, and it left me wanting more...
Wow, What a Thoroughly Great Book.......2001-05-11
No superlative is adequate to describe the high quality of this incisive reporting. How did this author ever stitch all of this story together? Incredible sources, great insights, and to think Gates almost pulled off the monopolistic crime of the century! Thank you U.S. government for protecting us from this abuse. Thank you John for taking time out of your busy schedule to clue the rest of us in to how this proud giant was humbled, for his own good.
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Seascapes and Angels
Dermot O'Neill
Manufacturer: Collins Press
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ASIN: 1898256861 |
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- A talented movie director for 50 years.
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Henry King Director: From Silents to Scope
Henry King ,
David Shepard ,
Ted Perry , and
Frank Thompson
Manufacturer: Directors Guild of America
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ASIN: 1882766032 |
Customer Reviews:
A talented movie director for 50 years........1998-09-19
Frank Thompson has re-edited some interviews with silent-film director Henry King into chronological order. King talks of his days as an actor, and then a silent film director. In the 1930's he moved to the Fox studios and directed many good films (including some classics such as THE GUNFIGHTER [1950]). King talks about Daryl Zanuck (the mogul at Fox) and many film stars such as Lillian Gish, Ronald Coleman, Gary Cooper, and Gregory Peck. The book has an excellent filmography in the back, plus a few pictures of King throughout the years.
Book Description
This investigation of the overwhelming appeal of quantification in the modern world discusses the development of cultural meanings of objectivity over two centuries. How are we to account for the current prestige and power of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is seen as desirable in social and economic investigation as a result of its successes in the study of nature. Theodore Porter is not content with this. Why should the kind of success achieved in the study of stars, molecules, or cells be an attractive model for research on human societies? he asks. And, indeed, how should we understand the pervasiveness of quantification in the sciences of nature? In his view, we should look in the reverse direction: comprehending the attractions of quantification in business, government, and social research will teach us something new about its role in psychology, physics, and medicine.
Drawing on a wide range of examples from the laboratory and from the worlds of accounting, insurance, cost-benefit analysis, and civil engineering, Porter shows that it is "exactly wrong" to interpret the drive for quantitative rigor as inherent somehow in the activity of science except where political and social pressures force compromise. Instead, quantification grows from attempts to develop a strategy of impersonality in response to pressures from outside. Objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts, quantification becoming most important where elites are weak, where private negotiation is suspect, and where trust is in short supply.
Download Description
This investigation of the overwhelming appeal of quantification in the modern world discusses the development of cultural meanings of objectivity over two centuries. How are we to account for the current prestige and power of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is seen as desirable in social and economic investigation as a result of its successes in the study of nature. Theodore Porter is not content with this. Why should the kind of success achieved in the study of stars, molecules, or cells be an attractive model for research on human societies? he asks. And, indeed, how should we understand the pervasiveness of quantification in the sciences of nature? In his view, we should look in the reverse direction: comprehending the attractions of quantification in business, government, and social research will teach us something new about its role in psychology, physics, and medicine.
Drawing on a wide range of examples from the laboratory and from the worlds of accounting, insurance, cost-benefit analysis, and civil engineering, Porter shows that it is "exactly wrong" to interpret the drive for quantitative rigor as inherent somehow in the activity of science except where political and social pressures force compromise. Instead, quantification grows from attempts to develop a strategy of impersonality in response to pressures from outside. Objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts, quantification becoming most important where elites are weak, where private negotiation is suspect, and where trust is in short supply.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting thesis, lumpy evidence, dense style.......2007-07-09
Theodore Porter makes the stimulating observation that "objectivity" is more prized in a democratic political culture based on competing interests than in autocratic cultures. He backs this up with a great deal of evidence -- perhaps too much -- by comparing two bureaucracies, the Corps des Ponts et Chaussees (CPS) in 19th Century France, and the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE)in 20th Century America.
The CPS was secure in its elite status; no one outside their community was second-guessing their judgment. Their rigorous mathematical education served more as evidence of a general level of culture, like knowledge of Greek or Latin, than as their main lens for viewing the world. By focusing on CPS debates about the appropriate placement of rail lines in France, Porter shows that CPS engineers used quantitative arguments as only one persuasive technique among many, and as only one type of input out of many that helped them to formulate their professional judgment. OTOH, the ACE's decisions about dam placements were under constant attack from various industry groups, other Federal bureaucracies, and the Congressmen who represented those other interests. As a result, the ACE gradually took refuge in cost-benefit analyses that were "objective" in the sense that they followed fixed and published rules (even if there was still a lot of opportunity to fiddle the figures). Ultimately, the ACE became proud to ignore "intangibles" -- the stuff that doesn't fit so easily into the rules -- even though, it is hinted, these should have been some of the most important considerations for the dam-placement decisions. This put the ACE in contrast not only to the CPS but even to 19th Century actuaries, whom Porter shows to have relied on their statistical tables as only one input among many other, less quantifiable judgments in making decisions about whom to insure (a quite surprising and interesting revelation).
Porter relied on many arcane and imaginative primary sources for his discussions of CPS and ACE, including actuarial trade journals, memoirs of the construction of rather discrete railway segments, and even 19th Century French farces (to illustrate popular attitudes toward statisticians). However, the extreme length and depth of his descriptions of the debates about rail lines and dams were overkill to make his case, since the substance of the decisions was less important than the bureaucracies' style of argumentation. These passages are also often excruciating to read, since the book doesn't include a single map, diagram or illustration of any kind. I really wished he'd omitted many of the details or at least relegated them to an appendix.
At the end of the book, Porter expands his thesis to include the social construction of quantities in social science and laboratory science, especially physical science. That's led to this book having been cited hundreds of times since its publication in 1994. (It was a cite in such a context that led me to read the book, in fact.) But his presentation of the expanded thesis, while suggestive and intriguing, is relatively rushed. It relies mainly on secondary sources and occupies only the last 30 pages out of 230 pages of text. Here is where more detail would have been a blessing.
As for style, it's quite heavy and stiff throughout the book. Unlike Philip Mirowski, many of whose themes and concerns are similar to Porter's, but who manages to be funny even when he's being pompous, Porter always sounds here as if he takes his subject too seriously. (Maybe he's lightened up since writing this work?) Compounding the stylistic problem, or maybe causing it, is that Porter seems never to have met a cultural theorist he didn't like. There's even an unnecessary, but politically correct, digression on multiculturalism, complete with reference to Michel Foucault. And expect to be puzzled by the book's concluding sentence unless you know the difference between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft (in German, no less), which is nowhere explained or even mentioned prior to this culminating point. That Porter ends with such an erudite reference at the very moment when he should be hitting the ball out of the park is an unfortunate epitome of the book's mandarin approach.
The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life.......2003-12-29
We have become a nation infatuated by, even dominated by, numbers. Our newspapers spew torrents of "statistics" - so many billions of dollars of this, or such and such percentage of that - and we humbly accept what we would certainly protest if it were presented in plain English.
It wasn't always so. Ted Porter, in "Trust in Numbers", goes back in time and traces the history of quantification from farmers and merchants, to engineers and accountants, and finally to the scientific community. It's tempting to assuming that this represents progress, an improvement in our ability and willingness to be objective and accurate.
"The language of pure and applied science suggests that quantitative professionals pursue rigor and objectivity except so far as political pressures force them to compromise their ideals. But this is exactly wrong. Objectivity derives its impetus, and also its shape and meaning, from cultural, including political, contexts."
Quantification, asserts Porter, is a "social technology". It arises out of the fundamental mistrust of strangers for one another as "communities" of experts become fractured and need to assert their credentials in the face of untrusting bureaucracy.
Porter quotes Richard Hammond: "In a country where the distrust of government is rife, the temptation to substitute supposedly impersonal calculation for personal, responsible decisions and to rely on the expert rather than size up the situation by oneself, cannot be but exceedingly strong."
This might all be interesting, but acceptable, if "objective" quantification were truly as pure and reliable as we assume. However, Porter goes into some detail into the difficulties the French Corps des Ponts et Chaussées and the US Corps of Engineers have had in quantifying the effect of their work on communities in order to cost justify them. If this book had been written more recently, it might have also noted the difficulties Enron and WorldCom had in quantifying their work, even under the eagle eyes of the SEC and so many "financial experts".
If Porter is correct in his interpretation of the reason for our unquestioning and lazy trust in numbers, then we need to drastically alter our education system. Here's Porter quoting Richard Hofstadter:
"The truth is that much of American education aims, simply and brazenly, to turn out experts who are not experts or men of culture at all."
The author of "Trust in Numbers" need never fear such derogation. His book is erudite and elegant and a pleasure to read.
Book Description
The work of Wilfred Bion, by its very nature being a major step forward in the psychoanalytical model making of the mental apparatus, will undoubtably require many years for its full assimilation into the thought and practice of workers in the field. To assist this process of assimilation two types of exposition are required: to help students read Bion's work in a comprehending way; and to shoe the way to the clinical application of this revolutionary modification of the working mosel of the mind.
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Getting Numbers You Can Trust: The New Accounting (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series)
Harvard Business Review
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
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Historic Preservation featuring: Miami Beach Bets on Art Deco, The Big Business of Artifacts Theft, Last hope for Landmarks, Ansel Adams: The Gentle Crusader, Tuskegee Institute Comes of Age, and Chesterwood's Modern Look.
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Historic Preservation featuring: The Enduring Frontier, Micronesia, bicentennial Outlook, Brands of the Old West, New Hampshire, Amoskeag Millyard Remembered, The College of Charleston, Woodrow Wilson, Books and Letters.
Customer Reviews:
Best of the best.......2000-05-02
The finest chapter in one of the best Greyhawk trilogies, this adventure begins with a deceptively simple mission - find the lair of the lizard men who are gathering weapons to attack Saltmarsh, and obliterate them! But, as the PCs should have learned from U1, nothing is even nearly that simple... the lizard men are actually peaceful and intelligent, and are desperately gathering their strength to stave off the imminent Sahuagin onslaught that will soon obliterate them, and the Saltmarshers as well... if they PCs (levels 1-4) can't learn the truth in this perfectly-scripted, dramatic espionage adventure, their brief careers as heroes will end... a classic of Greyhawk, highest recommendation.
Average customer rating:
- Good text, but a little boring and long winded ...
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Managing Business Process Flows: Principles of Operations Management w/ Student CD (2nd Edition)
Raví Anupindi ,
Sunil Chopra ,
Sudhakar Deshmukh ,
Jan A. Van Mieghem , and
Eitan Zemel
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
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ASIN: 0131676865 |
Customer Reviews:
Good text, but a little boring and long winded ..........2006-03-08
I used this book as a course text for my MBA class in introduction to operations. What I like about the book is simple, flowing text, good "summery section" at the end of the chapter and a wealth of problems. However, the book gets boring and long. A lot of textbooks are now full color and embellished with real life sidebars, and have great presentation qualities ... not this book! It's black and white, and things are hard to find in it.
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