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The Plot to Get Bill Gates |
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 The Plot to Get Bill Gates:An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest Man… and the People Who Hate Him By award-winning journalist Gary Rivlin ISBN 0812990730 Random House Canada 364 pages, 2000 Reviewed by Morgan Ann Adams Rich with humor and practical insights, The Plot to Get Bill Gates is a surprisingly entertaining tour through the minds of the world's computer tycoons. Rivlin stretches a literary theme as taut as is possible. Using a quote of a Bill Gates competitor, which compared Gates to the fictional whale Moby Dick and all his rivals as Captain Ahab, the book engages the general reader into this world of bits and bytes - starting with a simple biography of the world's richest man and moving on to descriptions of various other men (yes, this is a male dominated field) who have spent their adult lives chasing after Gates' example. Not only is this a who's who of modern technology, but it's also a witty examination of each of these men. Millions, even billions of dollars are spent and lost as dozens of Captain Ahab's pursue this lone white whale. Rivlin's style is totally unbiased, relating stories of the early days of Microsoft through numerous different sources, who seemingly have come to the same conclusion: Bill Gates is a master businessman, yet a mediocre computer programmer. The inherent unfairness of this fact seems to be the source of jealousy for many multi-billionaires in Silicon Valley. The idea that luck and strategy, rather than talent, propelled Gates to the status he enjoys appear to be keeping people up nights. It is this phenomenon that was the impetus for the book. The author's investigation into these men, and Gates himself, straddles the line between the biased journalists long ago swayed by Gates, and the seemingly angry web publishers with sites such as "Bill Gates is Satan." Rivlin filters through the hackneyed Bill Gates anecdotes, informing which he has researched to be true and which are questionable. The Plot to Get Bill Gates is not an extended gossip column. The descriptions of Gates' personal and public life are as insightful as they are comical. However, the obvious force of this book is not Gates himself, but what this one man has brought out in others. Rivlin has created an amateur textbook, chronicling the personality disorders of an entire industry. At times the footnotes were more amusing than the actual text, offering an intimate view of the numerous subjects he attempts to disrobe. Chapter titles such as "Bill Gates for Dummies" and "Resistance Is Futile.Com" reveal the book's light touch to be a cover for a very serious issue in American commerce. The trade paperback edition includes an afterword that covers in greater detail the antitrust issue the United States government has with Microsoft. Though it breaks up the natural feel of the book, the afterword is a competent update and a timely conclusion to a very modern story. With technology changing the makeup of the world on a daily basis, The Plot to Get Bill Gates has the potential to have a longer lifespan than most books of similar genre. It creates a category all its own: the literary business biography. An immensely entertaining read. |
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