The big score

Starting with the birth of Hewlett-Packard in the 1930s, Malone illustrates how decades of technological innovation, driven by the need for better hardware, laid the foundation for the meteoric rise of the Valley in the 1970s. Drawing on unvarnished interviews, he punctuates this history with incisive profiles of early luminaries, including William Shockley and Steve Jobs, when they were struggling entrepreneurs.