I really do think, and not just because I happen to be writing a book about it, that the business of creating and foisting new technology upon others that goes on in Silicon Valley is near the core of the American experience. The United States obviously occupies a strange place in the world. It is the capital of innovation, of material prosperity, of a certain kind of energy, of certain kinds of freedom, and of transience. Silicon Valley is to the United States what the United States is to the rest of the world. It is one of those places, unlike the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but like Las Vegas, that are unimaginable anywhere but in the United States. It is distinctively us.

This snapshot of late-1990s Silicon Valley is interesting because it’s so far removed from today. Think about what has changed: Google wasn’t started until 1998, Apple was floundering, and Microsoft ruled software; all while cell phones were novelties that could barely even function as phones.The ‘new new thing’ has since been fawned over and discarded a hundred times.

The main character here is Jim Clark, a name the public has forgotten who made billions from taking the Netscape browser public on the stock market. From reading this, I’m certain than he did a lot to push technologies from Netflix to GPS navigation from fanciful to commonplace. His gusto prompted gigantic tech companies to pour billions of dollars into these innovations that were terrible failures for their first dozen iterations.

Michael Lewis’ musings on untrammeled ambition and the ceaseless desire for New and More that technologists foist upon the world are not to be missed.

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The Louisiana Purchase must rate as Bonaparte’s greatest single failure of imagination. “Louisiana” compromised 828,000 square miles, subsequently becoming thirteen states. France was paid $15 million, or four cents an acre. If Bonaparte had used France’s legitimate rights to its American territory to explore and create an enormous dominion across the Atlantic, instead of trying to carve out an illegitimate empire in Europe, he would have enriched France instead of impoverishing her, provided scope for countless adventurous young Frenchmen instead of killing them in futile battles, and incidentally inflicted more damage on his British opponents than all his efforts in Europe. He would also have changed the globe permanently, something his career failed to achieve in the end.

This is a departure from the short biographies I’ve read by Paul Johnson because it’s obvious that he doesn’t like Napoleon. I’ve read his biographies on Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Winston Churchill, and each were intoxicating because of the author’s passion for his subject. His breathless enthusiasm is like that of a passionate teacher lecturing on something that excites him. But with Napoleon, Johnson’s usual enthusiasm is tempered by the tyrant’s pivotal failures.

Johnson sees Napoleon as a monumental but ultimately tragic figure, dragged down by his overwhelming aggression and ambition, a force of destruction and upheaval rather than creation. An opportunist for opportunity’s sake.

Perhaps that is the central lesson of Napoleon’s life, who was a brilliant battlefield strategist but miserable politician and statesmen. In fact, this point was made best by Johnson himself, in the final paragraph of this book:

The great evils of Bonapartism–the deification of force and war, the all-powerful centralized state, the use of cultural propaganda to apotheosize the autocrat, the marshaling of entire peoples in the pursuit of personal and ideological power–came to hateful maturity only in the twentieth century, which will go down in history as the Age of Infamy. It is well to remember the truth about the man whose example gave rise to all, to strip away the myth and reveal the reality. We have to learn again the central lesson of history: that all forms of greatness, military and administrative, nation and empire building, are as nothing–indeed are perilous in the extreme–without a humble and contrite heart.

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National polls taken shortly after the attack would identify all sorts of culprits contributing to the tragedy: violent movies, video games, Goth culture, lax gun laws, bullies, and Satan. Eric did not make the list. Dylan didn’t either. They were just kids. Something or someone must have led them astray.

The frightening part of this book is that it offers no scapegoat, no easy answer. The closest thing it offers is in the psychological profiles of the two perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold: that Eric was a psychopathic and Dylan was majorly depressed. And “an angry, erratic depressive and a sadistic psychopath make a combustible pair.”

Insanity was marked by mental confusion. Eric Harris expressed cold, rational calculation. Fuselier ticked off Eric’s personality traits: charming callous, cunning, manipulative, comically grandiose, and egocentric, with an appalling failure of empathy. It was like reciting the Psychopathy Checklist.

The closest thing I came to any sort of conclusion while reading this was when I was watching a documentary of the JFK assassination and some perceptive videographer captured this image from the movie poster of the film Lee Harvey Oswald was watching at the Texas Theatre when he was captured, War is Hell:

As chilling as that sentiment is, this book is a well-crafted snapshot of the late 90s. David Cullen approaches this delicate subject with nuance and respect. Along with 9/11, I consider this travesty to be one of the defining mass events of my adolescence. Harrowing, but necessary, reading.

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The three revolutionary changes that define our time are as follows: the More revolution, which is characterized by increases in everything from the number of countries to population size, standards of living, literacy rates, and quantity of products on the market; the Mobility revolution, which has set people, goods, money, ideas, and values moving at hitherto unimagined rates toward every corner of the planet (including those that were once remote and inaccessible); and the Mentality revolution, which reflects the major changes in mindsets, expectations, and aspirations that have accompanied these shifts.

 

Moisés Naím is convinced that being in charge is more difficult, less rewarding, and easier to fall out of than ever before in history. While technology is an obvious scapegoat for this, Naím proves that at its core this phenomena is rooted in the fact that “we are far more numerous on the planet; we live longer; we are in better health; we are more literate and educated; an unprecedented number of us are less desperate for food and have more time and money for other pursuits; and when we are not satisfied with our present location, it is now easier and cheaper than ever to move and try somewhere else.”

This book is an exploration of why people in power are having a more difficult time than ever exercising their authority. His anecdotes and quotes are convincing, and he makes his point from an exhaustive number of angles. Just take it from Bill Clinton’s quote on the cover: “The End of Power will change the way you read the news, the way you think about politics, and the way you look at the world.”

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