Word: bronsons
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Jake McGowan is squirming. It's this new book, Po Bronson's The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest (Random House; 302 pages; $23). Bronson, whose first novel, Bombardiers, skewered the world of Wall Street bond traders, has now set his sights on Silicon Valley. What fascinates McGowan is that the book reads like an old-fashioned roman a clef, in which fictional characters bear an uncomfortable resemblance to people you know--in this case, several computer-industry legends...
...this week, charts the development of the "VWPC" (for Volkswagen Personal Computer), a consumer-friendly $300 device that emerges from La Honda, an elite research center in the Silicon hills, and threatens to lay waste the industry-standard PC. By the time the new computer is ready to demo, Bronson has filled the plot with enough corporate double dealing, espionage and sleight of hand to libel all of California...
Davis, a mathematics concentrator, grew up in rural Bronson, Mich., population 2,300 and part of Michigan's aging industrial belt. He describes his background as "fairly poor." Most people in his hometown were from similar social situations...
...Bronson as a whole is not a rich town," he says. "I wasn't coming into contact with gross discrepancies...
...Davis' high-school classmates dropped out, but none had ever applied to an Ivy League school either. Of his graduating class of 72, about a quarter went on to college, mainly the University of Michigan or Michigan State University. Most graduates return to Bronson to work in blue-collar or clerical, service-sector occupations...