Includes bibliographical references (pages 463-470) and index.

Preface. Silicon Valley, explained: the story of the past, as retold by the people of the future -- Book one: Among the computer bums. The big bang : everything starts with Doug Engelbart ; Ready Player One : the first T-shirt tycoon ; The time machine : inventing the future at Xerox PARC ; Breakout : Jobs and Woz change the game ; Towel designers : Atari's high-strung prima donnas; PARC opens the kimono : good artists copy, great artists steal ; 3P1C F41L : it's game over for Atari ; Hello, I'm Macintosh : it sure is great to get out of that bag; Fumbling the future: who blew it: Xerox PARC--or Steve Jobs? -- Book two: The hacker ethic. What information wants : heroes of the computer revolution ; The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link : welcome to the restaurant at the end of the universe ; Reality check : the new new thing--that wasn't ; From insanely great to greatly insane : General Magic mentors a generation ; The Bengali typhoon : Wired's revolution of the month ; Toy stories : from PARC to Pixar ; Jerry Garcia's last words : Netscape opened at what?!; A fish, a barrel, and a gun: Suck perfects the art of snark; Culture hacking: the cyber underground goes mainstream -- Book three: Network effects. The check is in the mail : eBay's trillion-dollar garage sale ; The shape of the internet : a problem of great googolplex ; Free as in beer : two teenagers crash the music industry; The dot-bomb: only the cockroaches survive ... and you're one of the cockroaches; The return of the king: iCame, iSaw, iConquered; I'm feeling lucky: Google cracks the code; I'm CEO ... bitch: Zuck moves to Silicon Valley to "dominate" (and does); Purple people eater: Apple, the company that cannibalizes itself; Twitter: nose-ring-wearing, tattooed, neck-bearded, long-haired punk hippie misfits; To infinity ... and beyond! : Steve Jobs in memoriam -- Epilogue: The endless frontier: the future history of Silicon Valley.

A candid and comprehensive oral history of Silicon Valley's secrets traces the disruptions and start-ups that impacted its economy from the origins of Apple and Atari through the present-day clashes of Google and Facebook.