由David Kushner 撰写之著作 《Master of DOOM》在 Amazon 和 eBook上的销售喜人。本书的中文版权由我公司拿到，将在2004年4月出版。本书忠实详尽地讲述了两个玩家是如何走上游戏之路，如何制作出迄今为止影响力最大的游戏作品--DOOM和Quake，以及他们为何在最辉煌的时候分道扬镳。本书是国内第一部游戏领域的传记。与所有传记一样，不同的读者能从中得到不同的体验：或是那游戏制作的背景内幕、光环之中的趣闻轶事、年少创业的梦想豪情、奋斗途上的汗水艰辛，亦或是那成名之后的势易情迁，独辟蹊径的商业模式、天下为公的黑客精神、众说纷纭的暴力问题…

本书与《童年的消逝》《娱乐至死》并称尼尔•波斯曼的“媒介批评三部曲”，其一以贯之的主题是检讨技术对人类社会生活、文化、制度的负面影响。
作者认为，技术和人的关系是亦敌亦友的关系，他之所以揭示技术的阴暗面，是为了避免技术对文化造成伤害。文化有三种形态：在 工具使用文化阶段，技术服务、从属于社会和文化；在技术统治文化阶段，技术向文化发起攻击，并试图取而代之，但难以撼动文化；在技术垄断文化阶段，技术使信息泛滥成灾，使传统世界观消失得无影无踪，技术垄断就是极权主义的技术统治。
本书揭示了技术垄断阶段各种“软”技术的欺骗作用，挞伐所谓社会“科学”，谴责唯科学主义；辨析自然科学、社会“科学”和文学之异同，并为传统符号的耗竭扼腕痛惜；号召人们以强烈的道德关怀和博爱之心抵抗技术垄断，坚决反对文化向技术投降。

这是一部对人工智能充满敬畏之心的匠心之作，由《深入理解Java虚拟机》作者耗时一年完成，它将带你从奠基人物、历史事件、学术理论、研究成果、技术应用等5个维度全面读懂人工智能。
本书以时间为主线，用专业的知识、通俗的语言、巧妙的内容组织方式，详细讲解了人工智能这个学科的全貌、能解决什么问题、面临怎样的困难、尝试过哪些努力、取得过多少成绩、未来将向何方发展，尽可能消除人工智能的神秘感，把阳春白雪的人工智能从科学的殿堂推向公众面前。

【编辑推荐】
我们有石器时代的情感，中世纪的组织，却有着神一样的技术，这是最可怕的事情。
.
人与机器之间的边界，最危险之处并不在于机器能够变得多么像人，而在于人在多大意义上已经变得像机器——像机器一样只在规范之内定义自己，接受权威灌输和社会主流观念的潜移默化以及消费主义的各种操纵，而无力反思更高层面的问题。毕竟，人的自由意志能力，并不体现在他们愿意做什么，而体现在他们不愿意去做什么。
.
★我们总是过分强调精神与观念的伟大，却常常忽视技术对人类这一物种根本性的塑造能力
——现代社会和现代文明是启蒙运动时代的大知识分子的思想缔造的，还是科技进步缔造的，抑或是在国家和国家间的竞争中缔造的？如果没有现代技术的加持，新教改革能否发生，启蒙运动能否发生，英国革命、法国革命和美国革命能否发生？
——当下流行的那些经典解释框架—自由主义、民族主义或者左翼思想，它们有多少成分是在第一、二次工业革命之前就发展出来的？在今天，它们还有多大的有效性？
.
★以技术驱动为视角，从两千年人类历史长河中，选出14个历史关键时刻，洞察人类不可逆转的命运走向
——弩，如何扣动了中国大一统的扳机？——圣本笃会与现代资本主义有何关系？——如何看待技术型制度与信念型制度间的差异？——为什么说火枪的发明彻底改变了人类的命运和历史走向？
——为什么工业革命独独发生于英国？——为什么“光荣革命”的意义不只是立宪革命，更是一场“技术革命”与“资本革命”？
——铁路的发明跟威权政府之间是什么样的关系？——机枪的发明如何让20世纪世界格局重新洗牌？——核武器的发明如何改变“国家工厂”的模型？
——人与机器之间的边界是什么？我们是不是可以说，机器取代了传统的基因进化，是人类进化的新形式，称为一种更高效地改变人类“性状”的方式？——如何理解当下中国制造与世界的关系？
——为什么说在技术型社会中，人人平等，但技术专家却比其他人更“平等”，这是进入技术社会必然发生的事情？
……
作者积十数年之功，依凭规模庞大的知识基座，以技术发生为经线、人类攀爬技术天梯为纬线，导演了一场文明演进的大戏。
.
★物种规律：一种崭新的观察世界史演进（人物/历史事件）的视角
——过去人类惯常的观察视角，要么是以具体的个人在具体时空的活动为出发点，要么是试图从历史发展脉络中提炼某个主义或历史规律。
——但本书以为，更有意义的视角不是提炼历史规律，而是提炼物种规律：人类作为一个物种的规律远超于历史学家们熟悉的帝王将相史、文明史或思想史。
——在政治精英和文化精英之外，农夫、工匠和商贩们代表的庞大却易遭忽视的底层物质力量，必须得到反馈。
.
★刘擎、吴国盛、吴思、刘苏里、张树新都被书中的洞见打动
本书以丰富的实例技术发展与社会演化的互动历程，学识渊博，语言和思想皆雄辩有力，既晓畅易懂，又洞见灵现。
.
技术是人类意志的延伸，几乎内化于人的本质。人类处理与技术的关系，约等于处理人类自己——层级累进、彼此缠绕、相生相克，其重要程度不言而喻。人类度过幼年、少年、成年期后，不免反思“技术进步”的结果，争论可想而知。而一项论述得以成立，核心环节是提出正确的问题；进而解决这个问题，表明该项论述是成功的。
同时完成两项任务的作品并不多；而洞见迭出的论述，从来可遇不可求。作者积十数年之功，依凭规模庞大的知识基座，以技术发生为经线、人类攀爬技术天梯为纬线，导演了一场文明演进的大戏，波澜壮阔，令人叹为观止。“叹为观止”，引发讨论和争议乃题中之义。我期待接下来的讨论和争议。
——刘苏里 万圣书园创办人
.
青年政治学家张笑宇讲述了一个关于技术与文明的故事。他打破了专业铁笼的束缚，进入跨学科的“汇流”视野，来探究技术发展与社会演化的互动历程。从细致的个案考察中呈现时而令人惊奇的发现，从而阐发独到而宏阔的分析思考。
这是一个妙趣横生、充满真知灼见而发人深省的故事，甚至是一个动人的故事。最终，这是关于我们的时代与未来的故事。
——刘擎 华东师范大学教授
.
远行归来，没想到竟一口气读完《技术与文明》。本书实例丰富，洞见灵现，令人甚为惊艳，有一种几年前读尤瓦尔•赫拉利《人类简史》时的酣畅漓淋感！虽然有些思考，比如关于数字化和人工智能与未来社会的关系、中国发展与世界关系，似可再进一步深入和展开，但能在当下读到一本由中文青年作者原创、以技术驱动为视角且学识渊博的《人类群星闪耀时》，已殊为不易，可喜。
——张树新 阿拉善SEE生态公益学院院长 中国互联网产业奠基人之一
.
【内容简介】
历史学家只能等待重大事件发生后再去记录，但技术早已为重大事件在什么时间以怎样的形式发生埋下了伏笔。
本书以技术驱动为视角，从几千年历史长河中筛选出14个关键历史时刻，洞察人类社会不可逆转的命运走向：
——弩，如何扣动了中国大一统的扳机？
——圣本笃会与现代资本主义有何关系？
——如何看待技术型制度与信念型制度间的差异？
——为什么说火枪的发明彻底改变了人类的命运和历史走向？
——为什么工业革命独独发生于英国？为什么“光荣革命”的意义不只是立宪革命，更是一场“技术革命”与“资本革命”？
——铁路的发明跟威权政府之间是什么样的关系？机枪的发明如何让20世纪世界格局重新洗牌？
——核武器的发明如何改变“国家工厂”的模型？
——人与机器之间的边界是什么？我们是不是可以说，机器取代了传统的基因进化，是人类进化的新形式，称为一种更高效地改变人类“性状”的方式？
——如何理解当下中国制造与世界的关系？
——为什么说在技术型社会中，人人平等，但技术专家却比其他人更“平等”，这是进入技术社会必然发生的事情？
…………
作者积十数年之功，依凭规模庞大的知识基座，以技术发生为经线、人类攀爬技术天梯为纬线，导演了一场文明演进的大戏。
我们总是过分强调精神与观念的伟大，却忽视技术对人类这一物种根本性的塑造能力。技术如同一道地平线，每增高一分，人类文明的图景就被改变一分；如今，技术把我们带到了一个从未想象过的运行规模和层面，世界正在发生缓慢而坚定的转变，无论是古代的伟大思想家，还是近代的启蒙运动先驱者，从未有人明确告诉我们该如何组织社会，如何与技术的力量共存，一切只能由我们自己摸索。

張忠謀親筆撰寫、獨家授權自傳
他的一生，一場不能錯過的智慧盛宴！

一代半導體巨人張忠謀，一生底氣深厚的蓄積與征戰，
開創了專業晶圓代工的商業模式，成就了一個偉大的企業，
推進了世界科技的進程，改變了幾十億人的生活方式。

張忠謀寫張忠謀，以「簡單的字句，真實的感情」，寫下最真實的自己。
《張忠謀自傳：下冊 一九六四—— 二〇一八》，歷時七年，
寫他德儀二十五年生涯的風華與憔悴、台積電從蓽路藍縷的孤寂到大放異彩的歷程。
看他在最好的中年，創辦台積電，苦思每一個策略，精心布局每一次戰役，以誠信正直為盾，優越技術為劍，
帶領台積電的精兵，締造了咆哮的九○年代和絢爛的二十一世紀，成為世界上最重要的晶片製造公司。
這部回憶人生的巨著，是一趟情感之旅，也是一場智慧的盛宴，像是他留給世人，再創下一輪科技盛世的備忘錄。

征讨日尔曼人的罗马皇帝、天才军事工程师达芬奇、偷渡加州的日本船匠、中国宋代狱卒和《清明上河图》的绘者、闽浙山民、挪威木匠、武汉长江大桥的设计师……他们之间会有什么样的交集？——在这本特殊的“侦探故事集”中，他们“想”到了一起。
编木拱桥，一种奇特、罕见的桥梁形式，却又不断闪现在人类历史的各个时间、不同角落。它的“普世的独特性”，是一把理解人类建筑文明的钥匙。
这是一部严肃的建筑史学专著，亦是一程妙趣横生的“寻宝之旅”。作者历时十二载，入深山渡重洋、挥斧子扛木头，涉猎多语种文献古籍，穷极各种学术手段，去寻找编木拱桥的答案。
本书聚焦于“编木拱桥”，一种用木材交织起拱的结构形式、在人类历史上罕见而非凡的桥梁建筑。尽管特异，编木拱桥广泛存在于不同建筑文明、历史时期中，并在各个文化语境中被视为独创或特例。这种“普世的独特性”，使它成为人类文明中的一种奇特的建筑现象。
本书将探讨来自不同时间与空间的编木拱桥，讲述它们的故事与历史。
全书分为三个部分。上下两篇设计为五个独立的“故事”链环，分别涉及意大利、日本、中国宋代和明清以降的桥梁案例或学术史。笔者化身为一位“侦探”，引导读者观察各异的桥梁案例、解读不同的匠师头脑、体验不同的文化历史。每一段时空叙事都是独立的，围绕着相同的内核：它们如何诞生于世？又因何等的原由、以何等的姿态生长于各自的文化土壤中？而在结论篇，五个独立的链节将终于聚合在一起，“召唤神龙”。
以编木拱桥作为一条引路的红线，我们将深入踏足于多种不同文化的腹地，观览众多通常的“旅行指南”不会提及的异常景观。当我们将在所有这些从不同的目的地发掘的宝藏展放在一起，它们魔法般地构成了一幅更为宏伟的视图：一张以构造思维为核心的人类历史地图、一部特殊的技术史与社会史。

本书是鲍辛格的教授资格论文，初版于1961年，再版于1986年和2005年。它研究的核心问题是民间文化与技术发展之间的辩证关系和根本规律。因此，采取的是系统的和结构的（共时性）方法，而不是局部的、历史的（历时性）研究。作者从现象学角度考察民众主体的视域融合，分别从空间、时间和社会的层面具体分析了民间文化与技术世界相互制约和彼此影响的本质联系，在大的概念框架下组织并容纳了各种看似具体的经验材料，为我们展示了一幅复杂多变的现实图景。它不仅是对日常生活的发现和启蒙，更是对普通民众主体性和创造性的凸显和解放，也促成了民俗学从古代文化的理论研究转变为当代日常生活的实践研究。
这本书是真正的和充分意义上的划时代之作。——里夏德•魏斯（Richard Weiss）
鲍辛格用此书为1945年后德国民俗学的重新定向做出了重要贡献。——英戈•施耐德（Ingo Schneider）
鲍辛格的绝大部分例证取自德国，但他的描述和理论构想适用于各地。——丹•本—阿莫斯（Dan Ben-Amos）

Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters -- in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter.
The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an arrangement method that was the first instance of "predictive text."
Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.

在全世界的半導體業，鮮少人不知道Morris Chang ──　「張忠謀」。

他三十五歲擔任美國德州儀器公司積體電路部總經理，三十六歲升任副總裁，四十一歲時已是該公司主管全球半導體部門的資深副總裁。

一九八五年來台，他為台灣半導體業開疆闢土，一手創辦的台積電，如今帶領著台灣半導體業，登上世界第四大生產國的寶座。許多人都說：「若沒有張忠謀，台灣沒有今天的半導體業。」

究竟是什麼樣的人格特質與成長經歷造就了今天的張忠謀？儘管媒體報導如潮，十八歲離開中國大陸之後，將近四十年少用中文的他，在六十六歲這年，堅持用中文一字一句寫下這本自傳，他要呈現最真實的張忠謀。

An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict.
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market—runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity.
Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.
Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.

《飞机全书》以令人炫目的精美图文展示了载人飞行的非凡往事。该书收录了800余架（台/个）经典飞机、创新型发动机、著名制造商以及那些世界上先进的飞行器背后的人和技术，将成为您领略人类航空奇妙历史的绝佳指南。
★数千幅高分辨率典藏级美图
★详细解析经典名机设计特点
★飞机各关键系统一目了然
★文字简明生动，轻松阅读
★评述飞机设计大师成功之路
★一部掌心里的航空科技简史

The story of writing in the digital age is every bit as messy as the ink-stained rags that littered the floor of Gutenberg’s print shop or the hot molten lead of the Linotype machine. During the period of the pivotal growth and widespread adoption of word processing as a writing technology, some authors embraced it as a marvel while others decried it as the death of literature. The product of years of archival research and numerous interviews conducted by the author, Track Changes is the first literary history of word processing.
Matthew Kirschenbaum examines how the interests and ideals of creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution. Who were the first adopters? What kind of anxieties did they share? Was word processing perceived as just a better typewriter or something more? How did it change our understanding of writing?
Track Changes balances the stories of individual writers with a consideration of how the seemingly ineffable act of writing is always grounded in particular instruments and media, from quills to keyboards. Along the way, we discover the candidates for the first novel written on a word processor, explore the surprisingly varied reasons why writers of both popular and serious literature adopted the technology, trace the spread of new metaphors and ideas from word processing in fiction and poetry, and consider the fate of literary scholarship and memory in an era when the final remnants of authorship may consist of folders on a hard drive or documents in the cloud.

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually
from missiles to microwaves
runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing. Now, as
reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America’s military superiority and economic prosperity.

Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. became dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.

Illuminating, timely, and fascinating,
shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.

New York Times bestselling author Edward Dolnick brings to light the true story of one of the most pivotal moments in modern intellectual history—when a group of strange, tormented geniuses invented science as we know it, and remade our understanding of the world. Dolnick’s earth-changing story of Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the birth of modern science is at once an entertaining romp through the annals of academic history, in the vein of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, and a captivating exploration of a defining time for scientific progress, in the tradition of Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder.

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from forty-five to seventy-two years. Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end?
Gordon challenges the view that economic growth can or will continue unabated, and he demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 can't be repeated. He contends that the nation's productivity growth, which has already slowed to a crawl, will be further held back by the vexing headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government. Gordon warns that the younger generation may be the first in American history that fails to exceed their parents' standard of living, and that rather than depend on the great advances of the past, we must find new solutions to overcome the challenges facing us.
A critical voice in the debates over economic stagnation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.

The assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin's little tramp trying to keep up with a factory conveyor belt.) In America's Assembly Line, David Nye examines the industrial innovation that made the United States productive and wealthy in the twentieth century. The assembly line -- developed at the Ford Motor Company in 1913 for the mass production of Model Ts -- first created and then served an expanding mass market. It inspired fiction, paintings, photographs, comedy, cafeteria layouts, and cookie-cutter suburban housing. It also transformed industrial labor and provoked strikes and union drives. During World War II and the Cold War, it was often seen as a bastion of liberty and capitalism. By 1980, Japan had reinvented the assembly line as a system of "lean manufacturing"; American industry reluctantly adopted this new approach. Nye describes this evolution and the new global landscape of increasingly automated factories, with fewer industrial jobs in America and questionable working conditions in developing countries. A century after Ford's pioneering innovation, the assembly line continues to evolve toward more sustainable manufacturing.

This book charts the vicissitudes of a rural community of papermakers in Sichuan. The process of transforming bamboo into paper involves production-related and social skills, as well as the everyday skills that allowed these papermakers to survive in an era of tumultuous change. The Chinese revolution - understood as a series of interconnected political, social, and technological transformations - was, Jacob Eyferth argues, as much about the redistribution of skill, knowledge, and technical control as it was about the redistribution of land and political power. The larger context for this study is the 'rural-urban divide': the institutional, social, and economic cleavages that separate rural people from urbanites. This book traces the changes in the distribution of knowledge that led to a massive transfer of technical control from villages to cities, from primary producers to managerial elites, and from women to men. It asks how a vision of rural people as unskilled has affected their place in the body politic and contributed to their disenfranchisement. By viewing skill as a contested resource, subject to distribution struggles, it addresses the issue of how revolution, state-making, and marketization have changed rural China.

什么是古代？什么是现代？我们现在身处的这个世界是怎样形成的？我们和祖先的生活又有什么不同？那么，请跟随这本书，沿着机器和齿轮的轨迹，回到前世，回到古代，回到历史。
从石器时代的弓箭，到青铜时代的轮子，人类开始从工具到机器的旅程。当人类发现时间并驯服时间，人类最终被时间驯服；语言使人类区别于动物，文字却泄露了上帝的秘密。钟表和印刷机成为关于机器和现代最神秘的隐喻。钟表创造了时间，印刷书消除了时间。印刷书的到来引发了文艺复兴、宗教改革、科学革命和启蒙运动。从200年前开始，纺织机和蒸汽机为我们打开了工业时代的大门，火车和轮船打破了空间的区隔，天朝走向没落，美国成为现代国家的典范。战争释放了人类的狂热，人类却遭到机器无情的屠戮。电灯消除了夜晚，电话消除了空间，互联网将人类带入一个数字化的地球村。从汽车到电脑，人类根据自己的想象塑造了机器，同时也重新塑造了人类自己，使人类本身越来越像机器，直到被机器取代，这就是现代。
钟表、印刷机、纺织机、蒸汽机、计算机如同一座座里程碑，现代的历程就是传统终结的历史，就是人类一步步超越本能，超越自然，超越历史的历史。机器带给我们丰裕，也带给我们焦虑；一个被钢铁重构的世界，我们注定要失去栖居的诗意。金钱和财富筑成一部现代史，但人类文明的主旋律，依然是我们感受世界的心灵史。

Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year

“A gripping fly-on-the-wall story of the rise of this unique and important industry based on extensive interviews with some of the most successful venture capitalists.” - Daniel Rasmussen, Wall Street Journal

“A must-read for anyone seeking to understand modern-day Silicon Valley and even our economy writ large.” -Bethany McLean, The Washington Post

"A rare and unsettling look inside a subculture of unparalleled influence.” —Jane Mayer

"A classic...A book of exceptional reporting, analysis and storytelling.” —Charles Duhigg

From the New York Times bestselling author of More Money Than God comes the astonishingly frank and intimate story of Silicon Valley’s dominant venture-capital firms—and how their strategies and fates have shaped the path of innovation and the global economy

Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world.
  
In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby has parlayed unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time—the key figures at Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Chinese partnerships such as Qiming and Capital Today—into a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis that unfurls the history of tech incubation, in the Valley and ultimately worldwide. We learn the unvarnished truth, often for the first time, about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in Valley history, from the comedy of errors at the birth of Apple to the avalanche of venture money that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber.
 
VCs’ relentless search for grand slams brews an obsession with the ideal of the lone entrepreneur-genius, and companies seen as potential “unicorns” are given intoxicating amounts of power, with sometimes disastrous results. On a more systemic level, the need to make outsized bets on unproven talent reinforces bias, with women and minorities still represented at woefully low levels. This does not just have social justice implications: as Mallaby relates, China’s homegrown VC sector, having learned at the Valley’s feet, is exploding and now has more women VC luminaries than America has ever had. Still, Silicon Valley VC remains the top incubator of business innovation anywhere—it is not where ideas come from so much as where they go to become the products and companies that create the future. By taking us so deeply into the VCs’ game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.

For over thirty years David S. Landes's The Unbound Prometheus has offered an unrivalled history of industrial revolution and economic development in Europe. Now, in this updated edition, the author reframes and reasserts his original arguments in the light of debates about globalisation and comparative economic growth. The book begins with a classic account of the characteristics, progress, and political, economic and social implications of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, France and Germany. Professor Landes here raises the much-debated question: why was Europe the first to industrialise? He then charts the economic history of the twentieth-century: the effect of the First World War in accelerating the dissolution of the old international economy; the economic crisis of 1929-32; Europe's recovery and unprecedented economic growth following the Second World War. He concludes that only by continuous industrial revolution can Europe and the world sustain itself in the years ahead.