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Title: The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest: A Novel by Po Bronson ISBN: 0-380-81624-5 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 30 May, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.98 (42 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Wryly Humorous, but about as Deep as a Parking Lot Puddle
Comment: "The 1st $20M is the Hardest" is breezy, hip, and about as deep as a parking lot puddle.
Andy leaves the big tech company to go write some code in a sort of 90's Spirit Walk. Along the way this bright, naive, young idealist is manipulated into starting a company. The story ambles along through the "Andy in Wonderland" atmosphere of the Silicon Valley startup.
Bronson's prose is hip and cynical. Some of his vignette's are precious.
However, the story was a bit thin. The plot reminded me more of a juvenile novel than the polished work of an accomplished author. Sections of the novel are quite good, but the matrix is too weak to hold it all together. The story falls apart into a collection of amusing anecdotes.
I started "The 1st $20M is the Hardest" based on an excerpt published in "Wired". It should have stayed a short story or a novella. Bronson's wry humor helped me to finish this book, but there is not enough substance to recommend it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Realistic, entertaining, lucid, upbeat
Comment: Po Bronson's first novel, Bombardiers, a slightly surrealistic satire on bond salesmen, was a cross between Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It won some plaudits for its literary ambitiousness, but Bronson's overkill on the pointlessness of his characters' lives left a bit of a sour taste. This novel, a fictionalized story of the inventions of the Network PC and Java by a small Silicon Valley start-up, is far less stylized, but the characters are more likable, idealistic, and inspiring. This is to Bombardiers as Wolfe's The Right Stuff was to his Bonfire.
The depiction of computer nerds strikes me as realistic and sympathetic, although I'm sure not all Silicon Valley geeks appreciate the portraits. I also liked another realistic touch: there is no sex in the novel, and almost no women characters. This contrasts well with the other Silicon Valley start-up novel, Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, which starts out with a terrific portrait of life as a sleep-deprived minion of Bill Gates, then degenerates into a pilot for a sit-com that could be pitched as "It's like the cast of 'Friends' starts a software company."
I was especially impressed by how Bronson set up certain characters to be the villians of the plot, then showed us that from inside their heads they see themselves, with some justification, as the good guys. The conclusion is quite surprising: the most Machiavellian of the bad guys gets exactly what he was conniving for (a huge investment by a venture capital firm), then has to live with the bureaucratic consequences. I ended up feeling quite sorry about his plight.
Bronson is probably the most true-blue member of the small School of Wolfe (Richard Price is the senior member, with Jay McInerney floating in and out). I haven't yet figured out whether he has a huge amount of literary talent, or whether he'll simply be a very useful recorder of The Way We Live Now, but in either case he's worth reading. One big threat to his chances of becoming a great novelist is that he is probably the most handsome novelist since Hemingway, and that can cause no end of trouble.
Steve Sailer
Rating: 1
Summary: Insultingly stupid and extremely cheesy
Comment: Bad characters, inane and obvious plot and zero writing style make this one of the worst books I've ever had the misfortune to read. If you have any interest in the world of business or silicon valley and the computer industry you should find this book laughable. And to make matters worse Po Bronson takes the kindergarten level theme and story so seriously it makes you doubt his credentials.
I actually thought this might be a fun read as I was going through a similar situation as the lead character but just found this to be insulting me on every single page. I hope Amazon don't take it as a spoiler if I tell you the ending is unbelieveably stupid. In a word: Avoid.
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Title: What Should I Do with My Life? by PO BRONSON ISBN: 0375507493 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 24 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Nudist on the Late Shift : And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley by Po Bronson ISBN: 0767906039 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 02 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Bombardiers by Po Bronson ISBN: 0140254501 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Monkey Business : Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle by John Rolfe, Peter Troob ISBN: 0446676950 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0140143459 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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