BOOKS
Tell-all books about high tech companies are multiplying faster than the Melissa virus. This month sees the release of High Stakes, No Prisoners, by Vermeer Technologies founder Charles Ferguson, the latest behind-the-scenes look at an industry that's rapidly running out of scenes to go behind. Feel free to wade through every one of these expansive insider tomes yourself. Meanwhile, here's the condensed version.
Title and Author High Stakes, No Prisoners
Charles H. Ferguson
Please-Read-Me Subtitle A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars
Hero The author. "I tried to be straight, even generous, with people who were straight with me. But once you screwed me, you were fair game."
Villain Microsoft, whose style "further lowers ethical standards throughout an already brutally competitive, ruthless industry."
Best Mud Sling "Netscape's next mistake ... was its biggest and most fatal of all: hiring Jim Barksdale as CEO."
Title and Author High Noon
Karen Southwick
Please-Read-Me Subtitle The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems
Hero Scott McNealy, "a loner willing to stake his company and his own reputation on intuitive conviction about where technology is headed."
Villain Bill Gates, whom McNealy calls "probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age."
Best Mud Sling McNealy calling the Windows operating systems "a giant hairball."
Title and Author aol.com
Kara Swisher
Please-Read-Me Subtitle How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web
Hero Steve Case, "a deliberate and quiet person given to saying little and observing a lot."
Villain Bill Gates, who tells Case, "I can buy 20 percent of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into this business myself and bury you."
Best Mud Sling Barry Crimmins, testifying about AOL's chat rooms: "The pedophiles come after you like they're flies and you're rancid meat."
Title and Author The Plot to Get Bill Gates
Gary Rivlin
Please-Read-Me Subtitle An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest Man ... and the People Who Hate Him
Hero Bill Gates, "a masterful and extraordinary businessman ... calibrating his every word and action with both eyes on the bottom line."
Villain Bill Gates, who developed what a foe calls the "'praying mantis business model': First Microsoft had sex with you, then it ate you."
Best Mud Sling A Microsoft critic says Gates suffers from a form of autism whose symptoms include "uncontrollable rocking and a lack of human empathy."
Title and Author The Silicon Boys
David A. Kaplan
Please-Read-Me Subtitle And Their Valley of Dreams
Hero 3Com founder Bob Metcalfe, who says, "I think it's immoral for a company to go public without profits or reasonable projections thereof."
Everybody; all the way back to semiconductor pioneer William Shockley, described as "Dilbert's boss on crystal meth."
Best Mud Sling "By one estimate, the recent divorce rate in the Valley is 80 percent, and that's not factoring in Larry Ellison's marriages."
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