Authors: Stuart Read.
Hardcover, 242 pages
Publisher: Adams Media Corporation
Publication Date: 1999-11

Authors: Karen Southwick.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
Publication Date: 2003-11-11
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Karen Southwick’s unauthorized account provides the full story of Larry Ellison’s brilliant, controversial career. Ellison’s drive and fierce ambition created Oracle out of the dust and built it into one of America’s great technology companies, but his unpredictable management style keeps it constantly on the edge of both success and disaster. The hostile bid for PeopleSoft is just the most recent example. With one clever strategic move, Larry Ellison threw much of the business software field into play.

The saying “It’s not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail” has been so often used by or associated with Ellison that most people think it originated with him. It’s actually attributed to Genghis Khan, but it’s a dead-on way to describe not only the way Ellison thinks about competitors but the way he runs Oracle. His weapons are not marauding hordes, but Oracle’s possession of database technology that is crucial for keeping mission-critical information flows working at thousands of organizations, corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies.

Inside Oracle, Ellison has time and again systematically purged key operating, sales, and marketing people who got too powerful for his comfort. Most notable was Ray Lane, Oracle’s president for nine years, who was widely credited with bringing order out of the chaos that was Oracle in the early nineties and growing it into a ten billion dollar company. Ellison got rid of the one key person who was building confidence with Wall Street, business partners, and customers that Oracle was no longer flying by the seat of its pants and had its act together. Ellison’s mania for absolute control and his inability to coexist with the very lieutenants who bring much-needed stability to the company have brought Oracle to the brink of collapse before, and may well do it again.

Ellison is a throwback to an earlier, much more freewheeling version of capitalism, the kind practiced by the nineteenth-century robber barons who ran their companies as private fiefdoms. Larry Ellison is one of the most intriguing and dominant leaders of a major twenty-first-century corporation, and Everyone Else Must Fail raises the question of whether Oracle’s products and the reliance placed in them by so many are too important to be subject to the whims of one man. While giving credit to Ellison’s brilliance and devotion, the book sounds a warning about an ingenious man’s tendency to be his own company’s worst enemy....

Authors: Arnold Bitner.
Paperback, 156 pages
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc.
Publication Date: 2007-11-30
Edition: 0

Reviews :

   

Scrounging the Islands with the Legendary Don the Beachcomber is the life story of the man who created the Mai Tai and more than ninety other original tropical rum drinks. He started the Tiki culture, and his fame as a restaurateur, entrepreneur and business man eventually grew to international proportions. Often thought of as no more than a fictional character by those who never met him, syndicated columnist Jim Bishop wrote: There was and still is a drawing of Don the Beachcomber on the menu cover. A mustached man wearing a battered woven hat. Staring out at the farthest horizons. I never dreamed there was a real Don the Beachcomber. Just a drawing I thought. Then at Suva, on the far side of Fiji, the drawing came to life. Don stepped off an old prop passenger plane. The hat was the same. So were the mustache and quick black eyes.

...

Authors: Michael Drummond.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: Crown
Publication Date: 1999-11-16
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    The "Beastie Boys" did whatever it took to make their revolution happen. . . .

St. John's disregard for Microsoft authority figures was equaled only by the game developers' antipathy for the big Redmond company. No one knew how far he might go until his boss put him in charge of a presentation to the trade press.
        
St. John emerged on stage at the Microsoft theater and told the trade-press writers: "Yep, I know what you guys think about Windows."
        
He booted up a computer. The blue start-up screen with clouds and Windows 3.1 logo came to life on a large display. A graphic of a shotgun barrel rose from the bottom of the screen. With the audience looking down its sights, the gun blasted five holes in the logo. The press erupted with laughter and approving applause.
        
Microsoft's senior marketing vice president turned crimson and told St. John's boss, Rick Segal, "You gotta fire this guy."
        
Segal set the marketing guy straight.
        
"I looked him right in the face and, said, 'You don't have a clue. They think you're a slime bag and now they think he's a hero.'

"Competing in the high-tech computer market is a lot like war--especially if you work at Microsoft. Bill Gates's gladiators--his engineers and evangelists and programmers--were famous for seizing new terrain, converting nonbelievers, and always winning, no matter what the cost. No one took the lessons of the Microsoft way more to heart than Craig Eisler, Eric Engstrom, and Alex St. John, a trio of evangelists and software engineers who, more than anything, wanted to conquer a market on their own.
        
Their first attempt was a top-secret effort to make Windows do what it had never done before: play games. Turning their well-honed combat skills on their own company, the trio--often called the "Beastie Boys"--rammed DirectX, their game project, through, first without permission, then without regard for political correctness, protocol, or budget restraints. The battle spilled from the halls of Microsoft into the international gaming community, but within months, DirectX was being used in every one of the best-selling games for the PC.
        
The "Beastie Boys" had won the battle, but they received so few rewards that they felt as if they'd lost the war. So they set their sights on the Internet. Their new project: Chrome, a Web browser that could bring television-quality animated graphics to the Internet. It was every Microsoft marketer's dream, every competitor's nightmare. It should have changed the Internet and the lives of millions, none more than those of the three designers.
        
Michael Drummond gained exclusive access to this trio's story--the tale of a rise, a fall, and, perhaps, a triumph. In telling it, he gives us the most revealing glimpse yet into the world's most successful company. Renegades of the Empire isn't just a story of a nascent technology--it's a primer on how to get rid of your boss, how to bury your expenses on someone else's balance sheet, and when to put on your Viking costume and walk the halls swinging an ax if you want to get things done. It is a story of fascinating science and high-tech boys and their toys, but even more, it is the story of how three engineers turned the might of an empire to their own ends....

    Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is by no accounts a kind, nurturing type of manager. In conversation, according to Renegades of the Empire, Gates is said to challenge and goad people just to see how robustly they'll defend a position. He may not know whether they're right or wrong, but he likes to see how confident they are. In that environment, the meek don't do particularly well. But the three "software warriors" portrayed in Renegades of the Empire were over the top, even by Microsoft standards.

Alex St. John, Eric Engstrom, and Craig Eisler started at Microsoft as evangelists, the guys who persuade companies to create products to run on Microsoft operating systems. All three, separately and together, would end up giving the company fits with their cockiness and contrarian ways. Eventually, they would team up on a project called Chrome, a revolutionary technology designed to bring three-dimensional graphics to the Web. While these three bigger-than-life characters are vividly portrayed, this is mostly a story about technology: where the ideas come from, how it's developed, how internal company politics affects its development, and how outside companies are courted and cajoled to participate. Drummond, a skillful writer and dogged journalist, thoroughly explains all the technology--but, in the end, the acronyms take over. This makes for a tough read if you're not technologically inclined. Still, anyone with the slightest tech background should enjoy this peek behind Microsoft's silicon curtain. --Lou Schuler...

Authors: David Mayers.
Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Publication Date: 1990-04-12


Reviews :

    One of a select group of American foreign service officers to receive specialized training on the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s, George Frost Kennan eventually became the American government's chief expert on Soviet affairs during the height of the Cold War.
Drawing upon a wealth of original research, David Mayers' fascinating life of George Kennan examines his high-level participation in foreign policy-making and interprets his political and philosophical development within a historical framework. Mayers presents an engaging and lucid account of Kennan's training; his rise to prominence during the late 1940s and his policy failures; and his later roles as critic of America's external policy, advocate of detente with the Soviet Union, and proponent of nuclear arms limitation. Mayers also explores Kennan's complicated relationships with such important political figures and analysts as Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, and Walter Lippmann....

Authors: Maurice V. Wilkes.
Hardcover, 200 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 1985-09-04


Reviews :

    Maurice Wilkes was one of the leading scientific explorers in the development of the modern digital computer. He directed the Mathematical Laboratory (later named the Computer Laboratory) at Cambridge University, where he and his team built the EDSAC, the first stored program digital computer to go into service.

Wilkes describes in nontechnical detail the growth of EDSAC and its successor, EDSAC 2, his introduction of microprogramming, and the first experiments with time-sharing systems. In the 1950s, when machines were still getting larger rather than smaller, Wilkes was one of the few who foresaw a time when nonspecialists would be using computers almost universally, and he reviews his anticipatory efforts to develop simple programming systems. But his book is more than a history of computing, it also recounts the allied scientific effort when he was one of those scientists and engineers ("boffins" as they were called by the RAF) who were in the thick of it, his electronics skills enlisted in the new and exciting development of radar.

In this absorbing autobiography, Wilkes is as concerned with people and places as he is with computer components and programs of development. He deftly sketches his childhood in the English midlands and his student days at Cambridge where he studied mathematical physics, and his boyhood fascination with radio matured. He conveys the excitement of sudden insights and long-sought breakthroughs against life's simpler pleasures and trials. His account brims with assessments and anecdotes of such contemporaries as Turing, Hartree, von Neumann, Aiken, and a dozen others. And with his impressions of America and Germany formed during his scientific journeys....

Authors: C.R. Bell.
Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: GGC Publishing
Publication Date: 2006-01-15


Reviews :

    Career Diary of a Web Designer is a 30-day glimpse of the daily life of a professional Web Designer working in the non-profit sector. Bell begins by detailing his background and the steps he took to get to where he is today including what college courses he took and the lessons he learned from freelancing. Next, he includes an outline of his current responsibilities and takes you into the office and through his daily routine. In Career Diary of a Web Designer you’ll find out what it takes to be successful in the web-design field and get a peek at some of the challenges that you will face on a day-to-day basis, including software issues, client requests, and staying up-to-date with technology. Bell also includes suggestions on how to stay creative within the confines of client requests as well as how to hone your skills to stay competitive in an ever-changing field. This book should be a first step for anyone considering web design as a career....

Authors: Randall E. Stross.
Hardcover, 325 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
Publication Date: 2000-05-23
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    The first inside account of life within a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, eBoys is the fascinating true story of the six tall men who backed eBay, Webvan, and other billion-dollar start-ups that are transforming the Internet and setting a new pace for the economy.

Randall Stross, author of acclaimed books on Microsoft and Steve Jobs, blends a business historian's perspective with a journalist's flair for suspenseful storytelling to look at wealth creation up close. For two years, Stross gained unprecedented access to the venture capitalists at Benchmark, an upstart firm founded by thirtysomething renegades whose average height happens to be 6´5´´. Since Benchmark's founding in 1995, each partner's net worth has increased, on average, $100 million annually.

Stross was present as the Benchmark boys debated which businesses to support, and by recounting their conversations in testosterone-rich detail, he offers readers the most precise and enlightening account of the ways in which venture capitalists think, evaluate prospects, and wield influence.

Stross also gained access to a number of the Benchmark-backed start-ups, including a small, privately held San Jose company called eBay. The value of the company grew from $20 million to more than $21 billion within two years of Benchmark's investment, an increase of 100,000 percent. Business Week called it "probably the best venture capital investment of all time."

Venture capitalists have become iconic symbols of our time, just as investment bankers, investigative journalists, and hippies defined previous eras. In eBoys, Randall Stross has vividly captured the interplay of ambition, personality, experimentation, and risk, all acted out, larger than life, as the men of Benchmark and the entrepreneurs they back play their remarkable roles in the new world of Internet commerce and the creation of vast, sudden wealth....

    If you want to understand the 1990s, you have to understand venture capitalists. These are the people who listen to business pitches by the score, the financial-world equivalent of miners turning over tons of earth in search of precious metal. They're looking for the next Amazon.com, the next Yahoo!, the next eBay. Randall E. Stross, who teaches business history at San José State University, just happened to be there when a firm called Benchmark Capital discovered eBay. eBoys tells the story of how a group of not-quite-middle-aged men came to make an investment that returned a Silicon Valley record of 100,000 percent.

Stross is a gifted storyteller who weaves the personal histories of the Benchmark partners with stories of how the firm came to back such companies as Priceline.com and Webvan. We meet guys who weren't born to privilege, men who took unconventional routes into the venture capital business. Probably the most intriguing is Dave Beirne, a hyperaggressive executive recruiter who went into the business after realizing venture capitalists are the ones who really call the shots at high-tech start-ups. We also see the problems Silicon Valley guys have when they try to dot-com the bricks-and-mortar world. The short tale of an aborted partnership between Benchmark and Toys 'R' Us illustrates why the old economy is so mystified by the new.

Anyone interested in how business works should find something of interest in eBoys. From the organizational structure and corporate culture of Benchmark to the histories and personalities of its partners to its adventures in the world of Internet start-ups, it's a digital snapshot that reveals how successful businesses look, think, and mine gold in today's economy. --Lou Schuler ...

Authors: Kathleen Broome Williams.
Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
Publication Date: 2004-11-15

Authors: Dorothy Gilman.
Audio Cassette, 4 pages
Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
Publication Date: 1995
Edition: Unabridged 4 Audio Cassettes

Reviews :

    "Mrs. Pollifax Pursued By Dorothy Gilman, Narrated By Barbara Rosenblat." "Meet Mrs. Emily Pollifax, a sweet, gray-haired grandmother---and a daring CIA agent. Over the years, her far-flung adventures have won the lasting affection of mystery readers everywhere. In Mrs. Pollifax Pursued, Mrs. Pollifax is at her delightful best in a case that whisks her from her Connecticut neighobrhood to an African royal palace. A wealthy international financier has been kidnapped by two men in a dirty white van---the same van that is now parked on Mrs. P.'s maple-lined street. A terrified young woman hiding in Mrs. P.'s junk closet reveals that the men in the van have been chasing her for days, though she doesn't know why. Mrs. P. puts in a call for help to her CIS crony, Mr. Carstairs, who sends the woman and Mrs. P. into safe hiding at a carnival secretly backed by the CIA. But before they know it they're on the run again---this time to Ubangiba, where Mrs. P. and Mr. Carstairs must finally end a dangerous international money-making scheme..." [from the back of case]...