Sunnyvale - by Jeff Goodell (Paperback)

About the Book

In Sunnyvale, California, in 1979, Goodell's family lived quietly, unaware that their town was soon to become ground zero in the digital revolution. Affecting and personal, his autobiography is a portrait of one family's fate in a brutally Darwinian world.

Book Synopsis

In Sunnyvale, California, in 1979, Jeff Goodell's family lived quietly on Meadowlark Lane, unaware that their town was soon to become ground zero in the digital revolution. Over the course of the next decade, as Silicon Valley boomed, the Goodell family unraveled.

Splintered by their parent's divorce, Jeff and his siblings careen toward self-destruction, while their parents end up on opposite sides of the technological divide: their mother succeeds beyond her wildest dreams at "a small company with a dopey rainbow-colored logo," called Apple, while their father refuses to keep up with the times and loses his landscaping business. Affecting and personal, Sunnyvale is a portrait of one family's fate in a brutally Darwinian world. It is also a thoughtful examination of what has happened to the American family in the face of the technological revolution.

Review Quotes

"A perceptive memoir of growing up in a household that was post-nuclear with a vengeance."-The New York Times

"Mesmerizing and deeply authentic.... Compelling."-San Jose Mercury News

"Reflects the seismic social changes that still shake American society."-USA Today

About the Author

Jeff Goodell is the author of The Cyberthief and the Samurai. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Wired, and GQ. A fourth-generation Californian, he now lives in upstate New York. He can be e-mailed at jg@well.com.