| Summary: |
Author Kidder gives us a window onto the paradoxical world of software engineering and Internet commerce, where genius and artistry often mingle with vulgarity and greed, and where Paul English, for all his success, seems at times almost an innocent. Fortune, mania, genius, philanthropy--the co-founder of the travel website Kayak.com grew up in working-class Boston in the 1970s, a boy who rebelled against authority but discovered a world that called out to his talents the first time he saw a computer. Despite suffering from what would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, English belongs to what computer scientist Donald Knuth has called the 2 percent: people with a special talent that lay dormant in a fraction of humanity, waiting for its instrument--the computer--to be invented.--Adapted from dust jacket. |
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