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Rich, Laura : THE ACCIDENTAL ZILLIONAIRE : DEMYSTIFYING PAUL ALLEN

Wiley, 2002

ISBN 9780471234913

A highly collectible tight clean copy, protected in a new brodart wrapper, no inscriptions, unclipped dustjacket, this is not an Ex-Lib or a BCE/BOMC edition. Everyone knows about Bill Gates, the boy-wonder founder of Microsoft and th e planet's richest citizen. Although less well known, Paul Allen helped mak e Gates's good fortunes possible, and he's certainly worth study for his mi stakes just as much as his many successes. Enter former Industry Standard reporter Laura Rich, who does little to demy stify Allen the man, but paints a useful portrait all the same. Rich takes readers through Allen's career as an early Gates ally, a technically savvy man who first saw the possibilities of DOS, the operating system that drove a big chunk of the personal computer market, and launched several other so ftware enterprises. Although he left Microsoft owing to illness in 1983 (ac cording to Rich, Gates has behaved badly toward him ever since), Allen is s till a major shareholder and has amassed a personal fortune that dwarfs the GNPs of whole nations. As Rich observes, Allen has put this money to good use as "technology's archangel," but has also managed to lose staggering su ms in misguided ventures--some too far ahead of their time, some just plain wacky. Those missteps have earned Allen the sobriquet used in Rich's title. Though carelessly written and full of unhelpful asides ("Software is a language, hardware is more technical"), her book provides ample evidence for both why the name fits and why Allen, a visionary and man of action, merits respect., Near Fine/Near Fine

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