Andy Grove's new book, "Swimming Across," a memoir of his early life
Andy Grove's new book is out. I happened to see it yesterday on the new book shelves in Santa Cruz and sat down (in the bookstore of course, as I rarely buy hardbacks I can breeze through for free) to skim sections of it.
His book is about his life in Hungary and New York up to the time he left college in NYC and drove out to California for grad school at Berkeley. Interesting stories of life in post-WWII Hungary.
The most intereting description was of how he was not used to closed-book exams and having to memorize equations and formulas. From being a straight A student in Hungary, he got an "F" on his first big physics exam in NYC (City College, if I am remembering correctly). The professor called him aside and said he could drop the class without prejudice and pick it up again when he was better prepared. Groff, as he was then known, decided to do whatever it took, and studied the physics class material thoroughly before doing any other homework. It paid off when he got an "A" on the next major exam.
Some of his classmates and friends took to calling him "Andy," which he said felt as natural to him as his born name. And he changed his name to "Grove," which sounds close in English to his Hungarian name "Groff." (People had been calling him "Gruff." Hmmmmhhh...maybe they were thinking to the future with the sign-in late sheet issue?)
The memoir ends with his drive to California, during which he was thrilled to see the mountains of the Sierras and Sierra Nevada described by his favorite fiction author, Karl May. (No relation to me. Karl May, pronounced "Karl My," was a famous German novelist, a favorite of Grove as well as of Hitler and tens of millions of others, who wrote stories of the American west. May never visited America, but his stories of "Old Shatterhand," the cowboy, were and are staples in Europe. When I was travelling through Europe a while back I had many people ask if I was related to old Karl.)
Grove does have a one-page postscript where he mentions his later life at Fairchild and Intel, as well as summarizing what happened to the various friends and family members he had introduced us to. I was surprised to read that his father and mother, who joined him in America five years after his own arrival, worked as a clerk and a cashier in the Bay Area until their retirement in the 1970s.
I really hope Grove's book is at least semi-successful (hard to picture it selling extremely well, as it it's a memoir, and not really of the times in his life that are most interesting to most people, it seems to me). I hope it sells because I want to read the _next_ one, the one covering his years at Fairchild and maybe even getting into the years at Intel.
This is a period in history very poorly covered. While there have been several dozen books about the computer and personal computer industry, with several books each on IBM, Microsoft, and Apple alone, there have been few books about the chip industry. Dirk Hanson's "The New Alchemists," Tim Jackson's "Inside Intel," and just a very few others.
And while Tom Wolfe wrote a nice piece on Bob Noyce many years ago--circa 1983-84, IIRC--there have been very few good pieces on Gordon Moore and Andy Grove. Yeah, a bunch of cover stories for "Business Week," "Fortune," "Forbes," etc., but not in probing detail.
Jackson's book on Intel had a lot of interesting tidbits (like the first head of marketing, who lost out in a power struggle...I joined Intel in 1974 and had never even _heard_ of this guy!). But Jackson did not have access to Intel Insiders (TM) and so it relied on the reminiscences of outsiders and former employees (like both me and Paul Engel).
It's a pity the Intel Insiders have been so parsimonious in talking to journalists. Do they think important secrets will leak out and help Jerry's Kids? Do they think a "transfer of proprietary managerial secrets" (a 20-year-old joke) will occur?
I would dearly love to read Gordon Moore's reminiscences about his years with Shockley, the things that went into the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor, his years as head of F'child's R&D, and, of course, the founding of Intel and the early years. Ditto for Grove's version of these events.
This is _real_ history, maybe some of the most important history of the past half-century.
--Tim May |
