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The richly told narrative of the Silicon Valley generation that launched five major high-tech industries in seven years, laying the foundation for today's technology-driven world.At a time when the five most valuable companies on the planet are high-tech firms and nearly half of Americans say they cannot live without their cell phones, Troublemakers reveals the untold story of how we got here. This is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together, they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so, they changed the world. In Troublemakers, historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor, as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.



About the Author

Leslie Berlin

Leslie Berlin is Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University. She has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences and served on the advisory committee to the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Leslie was a "Prototype" columnist for The New York Times and has commented on Silicon Valley for the Wall Street Journal, NPR, PBS, The Atlantic and Wired. 

Former Google chairman Eric Schmidt called publication of Troublemakers, her book exploring how Silicon Valley during the 1970s set the stage for our modern high-tech world, "a landmark event." The Washington Post said that The Man Behind the Microchip, her definitive biography of microchip co-inventor and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce, "should be required reading for today's entrepreneurs and executives."

She received her PhD in History from Stanford and her BA in American Studies from Yale. She has two college-age children and lives in Silicon Valley with her husband, whom she has known since they were both twelve years old. More at leslieberlinauthor.com



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