Totally Wired: On the Trail of the Great dotcom Swindle: The Wild Rise and Crazy Fall of the First Dotcom Dream - Hardcover

Andrew Smith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847374492 ISBN 13: 9781847374493

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK, 2012

Synopsis

The story of the dotcom bubble, its tumultuous crash, and the visionary pioneer at its centre.
One morning in February 2001, Josh Harris woke to the certain knowledge that he was about to lose everything. The man Time magazine called 'The Warhol of the Web' was now reduced to the role of helpless spectator as his personal fortune dwindled from 85 million dollars...to 50 million...to nothing. In the space of a week. If the mania attending those events is hard to recall, it's because when the crash came, the dreams and expectations of those surreal few years were swept away with near Biblical inclemency: little more than a decade later they seem shrouded in a kind of pre-Millennial mist; might never have happened. How easy to forget that at the end of 1999, the world seemed to be spinning off its axis as a new one evolved before our eyes, with anything imaginable seeming to be possible, in real time...In his bestselling book Moondust Andrew Smith looked at the lives of the nine remaining Moonwalkers, how their exploits helped shape an era and how that era left its mark on them. In Totally Wired, he goes in search of the truth about one of the most extraordinary and mysterious events of the 20th century, the dotcom bubble of the 1990s, and draws a direct line from there to where we are now.

About this title

Review:

Effervescent...vivid...this is a book whose time has come - Sunday Times

A high-energy romp through the digital boom-and-bust that has lessons for today...The Social Network meets Hammer of the Gods via Warhol's Factory - Independent

A brilliant exploration of madness and genius in the early days of the web - Guardian

Dark...compelling...the counter-cultural tremor from which the social media earthquake erupted - Mail on Sunday

Essential and thrilling...a vivid, engaging portrait of a gigantic, contradictory, infuriating character who helped create the present...A brilliant, funny, important book - Frank Cottrell Boyce, writer of '24 Hour Party People' and 'Millions'

Fascinating...a slice of life never to be repeated...peppered with enjoyable anecdotes - Observer

In his first book, Moondust, Smith interviewed the nine remaining astronauts who had walked on the moon; here he talks to the early internet pioneers to piece together another pivotal moment in human history - Financial Times

It may be about a series of events that happened years ago, but it's the first great analysis of the internet age - National

Telling the story of the rise of the internet and its all-persuasive influence on our culture, what emerges is both utterly absorbing and highly entertaining - Oldie

--Oldie

'Effervescent...vivid...this is a book whose time has come' --Sunday Times

'A high-energy romp through the digital boom-and-bust that has lessons for today...The Social Network meets Hammer of the Gods via Warhol's Factory' --Independent

About the Author:

Andrew Smith is the author of the international bestseller Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth. As a journalist he has written for Melody Maker, The Face, The Sunday Times, and The Observer. He has also written and presented two documentaries for BBC Four, Being Neil Armstrong, and To Kill a Mockingbird at 50.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1847374492
• ISBN 13: 9781847374493
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416