- Author:
- John Heilemann
From the Publisher:
The humbling of Bill Gates and Microsoft is the last great business story of the 20th Century and the first great riddle of the 21st. How did the richest man in the world, the most powerful icon of the New Economy, wind up being pursued and attacked by his own government__ __ And how did a company that had utterly dominated the technology landscape find itself weakened, vulnerable, and under threat of a court-ordered breakup__ __
John Heilemann's Pride Before the Fall uncovers the secret history of the trial that shook an economy: United States v. Microsoft. Drawing on years of reporting - including extensive interviews with Gates and other top Microsoft executives, Justice Department trustbuster Joel Klein, superlitigator David Boies, Intel chief Andy Grove, and scores of lesser-known but pivotal players - Heilemann lays bare the chaotic forces that shattered Microsoft's aura of invincibility and the climate of fear that held an industry in thrall.
Packed with rich detail, dramatic scenes, and explosive revelations, Pride Before the Fall tells the stories of the largely unknown men and women who turned their opposition to Microsoft's monopolistic practices into a crusade. It explains how the high-tech kingpins whose businesses Gates tried to destroy or strongarm (Netscape, Apple, Sun, even Intel) worked in secret to help the Feds bring Microsoft down. And it offers a vivid and at times shocking portrait of Gates himself - describing a man who in the early 1990s boasted to his friends, "I have as much power as the President," only to be cast into rage and depression a few years later, when he discovered just how wrong he'd been.
With this, his first book, Heilemann confirms his reputation as one of our sharpest-eyed chroniclers of the information revolution; as a journalist whose skills as an investigative reporter are matched only by his gifts as a writer. More than a gripping business or legal or political yarn, Pride Before the Fall is a powerful tale of human ambition and human frailty—a timely saga of arrogance, ruthlessness, and revenge.