Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family
by Goodell, Jeff
- New
- Paperback
- Condition
- NEW
- ISBN 10
- 0679776389
- ISBN 13
- 9780679776383
- Seller
-
Sylva, North Carolina, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
"Hi, it's Jeff." Silence. "Your grandson," I added."Oh. Yes. Jeff. How are you?"I told him I'd like to stop by and introduce him to my wife."Great," he said, sounding genuinely surprised. "Why don't you come by and pet the robots?"In Sunnyvale, California, in 1979, Jeff Goodell's family lived quietly on Meadowlark Lane, unaware that their town was soon to become ground zero in the digital revolution. Then one day his mother announced that she and his father were divorcing after twenty years of marriage. Big deal, thought Jeff. "Everybody we knew was splitting up-it was the romantic equivalent of the pet-rock craze." Over the next decade, Silicon Valley boomed, and the Goodell family unraveled. Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family is the story of a fragile, all-too-ordinary family caught at the epicenter of one of the great economic, cultural, and technological explosions in recent history.After the divorce, Goodell's mother went to work for a little company called Apple Computer and began her ascent into the new world; his father, a landscape contractor who valued plants and trees over bits and bytes, found himself alone and falling farther and farther behind. For the Goodell children, the aftershocks brought pain and confusion: Jeff ran off to Lake Tahoe and the fast track to nowhere; his younger brother, Jerry, began a nightmarish descent into drugs, alcohol, and sexual experimentation; and eleven-year-old Jill bounced between two houses, struggling to make sense of her shattered world.Watching it all was grandfather Leonard Goodell, a Westinghouse ur-geek who-even in his late seventies-still had enough mental horsepower to work as a lead engineer in a robotics factory. But as Leonard watched his son's family fall apart, he realized his worldly success had not come without a human cost, and near the end of his life he began his own quest for forgiveness and redemption.Sunnyvale is a portrait of a way of life that is no more, in a place where progress runs wild. It is about individuals struggling to make lives for themselves in a brutally Darwinian world. Above all, it is about what we owe to the people we love. A unique and compelling family story, it is also a resonant document of our age.From the Hardcover edition.
Reviews
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- City Lights Bookstore (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 0679776389
- Title
- Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family
- Author
- Goodell, Jeff
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- New NEW
- ISBN 10
- 0679776389
- ISBN 13
- 9780679776383
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Pub. Group
- Place of Publication
- Toronto, On, Canada
- Date Published
- 2001
Terms of Sale
City Lights Bookstore
We accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express bank cards plus PayPal, money orders or checks in U.S. funds. Libraries invoiced with a purchase order. North Carolina residents please add 7% sales tax or provide a tax exemption ID number. Expedited and international shipping charges will be quoted with confirmation of the order. Digital photo available of any book cover, simply call us (828-586-9499) or email. Dust jackets can be enclosed in a mylar cover for a fee of $3.98 per volume.