About this item
From award-winning journalist Andrew Smith, the never before told story of the late 1990s dot-com bubble, its tumultuous crash, and the rise and fall of the visionary pioneer at its epicenter. One morning in February 2001, internet entrepreneur Josh Harris woke to 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, all in the space of a week. Harris had been New York's first net millionaire, a maverick genius so preternaturally adapted to the fluid virtualities of the new online world that he saw it with a clarity almost no one else did. He founded the city's first dotcom, Pseudo.
About the Author
Andrew Smith knew ever since his days as editor of his high school newspaper that he wanted to be a writer. After graduating college, he experimented with journalistic careers - writing for newspapers and radio stations - but found it wasn't the kind of writing he'd dreamed about doing. Born with an impulse to travel, Smith, the son of an immigrant, bounced around the world and from job to job, working at various times in a metals mill, as a longshoreman unloading bananas from Central America and imported autos from Japan, in bars and liquor stores, in security, and as a musician, before settling down permanently in Southern California. Here, he got his first "real job," as a teacher in an alternative educational program for At-Risk teens, married, and moved to a rural mountain location. Throughout his life, Smith continued to write, but never considered seeking publication until challenged into it by lifelong friend, author Kelly Milner Halls. In 2008, Smith published his first novel, Ghost Medicine, an ALA/YALSA "Best Books for Young Adults." This was followed in 2009 with In the Path of Falling Objects, also a BBYA recipient. The Marbury Lens is Smith's third novel, and will be followed in 2011 by Stick. Smith prefers the seclusion of his rural setting, where he lives with his wife, 16-year-old son, 13-year-old daughter, two horses, three dogs, three cats, and one irritable lizard named Leo.
