"Until a few years ago," notes journalist-consultant UdayanGupta, "venture capitalists were hardly on anyone's radar screen."That's not the case these days, as financiers who used to workbehind the scenes now regularly set markets afire with their publicsupport of high-profile technology and Internet stocks. In DoneDeals, Gupta allows 35 of the brightest stars in what has become a$30-billion-a-year business to tell their own stories in their ownwords. We get to see exactly what they were thinking when theybacked such endeavors as Intel, eBay, Excite, Genentech, and 3Com.Gupta's intention is to demonstrate how the industry has changedover the past half-century and how it differs today among itsvarious forms. He achieves this beautifully by dividing thefirst-person accounts into thematically attuned sections that focuson dealmakers of the future (such as Mitch Kapor of AccelPartners), early pioneers (including the late Benno Schmidt of J.H.Whitney Co.), West Coast veterans (such as Don Valentine ofSequ
In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocativeguide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's mostwidely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise ofthe classical recording industry from Caruso's first notes to theheyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan. Lebrechtcompellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached itsend point-but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. Itis, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form,analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini,Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is thestory of how stars were made and broken by the record business; howa war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to createa record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars,public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musicalbackdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrineto classical recording: the author's critical selectio
Whether Gould's subject is Boulez, Stokowski, Streisand, orhis own highly individual thoughts on performance and creation ofmusic, the reader will be caught up in his intensity, intelligence,passion and devotion.
