The New New Thing

Paperback, 349 pages

English language

Published April 6, 2014 by W. W. Norton & Company.

ISBN:: 978-0-393-34781-4

(6 reviews)

In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis set out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world’s most important technology entrepreneur. He found this in Jim Clark, a man whose achievements include the founding of three separate billion-dollar companies. Lewis also found much more, and the result — the best-selling book “The New New Thing” — is an ingeniously conceived history of the Internet revolution.

1 edition

Hugh reviewed The New New Thing by Michael Lewis

Review of 'New New Thing' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

The story is just another saga of the same old rich tech billionaires being shits. It’s a long “isn’t he interesting” piece about a guy who repeatedly managed to hack the stock market to enrich himself. Of interest to others, I’m quite sure, so if it sounds like your bag, I would say go for it.

That is, I would say go for it, if the text itself wasn’t pretty consistently indulging in horrific stereotyping of Indian software developers. There’s gratuitous talk of rooms “smelling like curry”, which felt pejorative. Lots of discussion about there being “no US citizen in the room”. In the audiobook I read, the narrator imitates Indian accents when quoting. (There’s also god awful UK and New Zealand accents). I am absolutely not interested in hearing the “it’s of it’s time” take.

Don’t buy this book.