Product Description

"Hi, it's Jeff." Silence. "Your grandson," I added.
"Oh. Yes. Jeff. How are you?"
I told him I'd like to stop by and introduce him to my wife.
"Great," he said, sounding genuinely surprised. "Why don't you come by and pet the robots?"

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. Then one day his mother announced that she and his father were divorcing after twenty years of marriage. Big deal, thought Jeff. "Everybody we knew was splitting up-it was the romantic equivalent of the pet-rock craze." Over the next decade, Silicon Valley boomed, and the Goodell family unraveled. Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family is the story of a fragile, all-too-ordinary family caught at the epicenter of one of the great economic, cultural, and technological explosions in recent history.

After the divorce, Goodell's mother went to work for a little company called Apple Computer and began her ascent into the new world; his father, a landscape contractor who valued plants and trees over bits and bytes, found himself alone and falling farther and farther behind. For the Goodell children, the aftershocks brought pain and confusion: Jeff ran off to Lake Tahoe and the fast track to nowhere; his younger brother, Jerry, began a nightmarish descent into drugs, alcohol, and sexual experimentation; and eleven-year-old Jill bounced between two houses, struggling to make sense of her shattered world.

Watching it all was grandfather Leonard Goodell, a Westinghouse ur-geek who-even in his late seventies-still had enough mental horsepower to work as a lead engineer in a robotics factory. But as Leonard watched his son's family fall apart, he realized his worldly success had not come without a human cost, and near the end of his life he began his own quest for forgiveness and redemption.

Sunnyvale is a portrait of a way of life that is no more, in a place where progress runs wild. It is about individuals struggling to make lives for themselves in a brutally Darwinian world. Above all, it is about what we owe to the people we love. A unique and compelling family story, it is also a resonant document of our age.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125448 in eBooks
• Published on: 2002-08-13
• Released on: 2002-08-13
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Amazon.com Review
In the town of Sunnyvale, in the heart of Silicon Valley, every day brings sunshine and progress, and everything is supposed to work out okay. Not surprisingly, this thoughtful and deeply affecting memoir tells the story of a family that falls apart (or rather "off the Norman Rockwell easel") in the midst of this fantasy. When Mrs. Goodell decides to get a divorce, she blasts off from Planet Marriage and hitches her future to the embryonic Apple Computer company. The other family members, however, quickly unravel. Jeff, the oldest son, quits his Apple job for the casinos of Lake Tahoe, fully believing he is "leaving behind a bunch of nerdy machine heads who were destined to live small, narrow lives empty of romance or mystery." His father, a landscape architect and a family man devastated by the divorce, finds himself becoming an anachronism in the Silicon Valley chip-and-code culture. And the sensitive youngest son, Jerry, plunges into drugs, alcohol, and sexual experimentation.

While there are amusing anecdotes about what happens in the cubicles of the computer industry, Goodell focuses his clear eyes and likable style on the powerful relations of family members in crisis--on the corrosive power of competition between siblings, the disillusionment of seeing a parent fail, the despair of witnessing a loved one self-destruct, and the inevitable backlash that happens when we try to run away. Goodell himself is party to this universal irony for, despite trying to flee Silicon Valley culture, he's became one of its best-known chroniclers. And in the Valley, he finds the greatest metaphor for escape:

I feel like I'm looking down into the heart of a vast electronic hive, where the honey is time: faster chips, faster software, faster wires. It's not about efficiency--it is about cheating death. Dreaming of speed is the way engineers dream of immortality.

The men in Goodell's family are, in their own ways, at odds with this reigning faith. Goodell has given us a powerful and ultimately redemptive example of a family caught in the vortex of rapidly changing times and the tragedy wrought on those left behind. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly
The Silicon Valley bubble burst early for Goodell, who tossed away a plum gig at the pre-IPO Apple Computer to hustle blackjack tables at Lake Tahoe, becoming "the worst-dressed dealer in the state of Nevada." Yet that missed opportunity has been the least of his worries, he relates in this deeply emotional memoir about the ups and downsAmostly downsAof a "suburban American post-divorce, post-nuclear family." The implicit optimism in the name Sunnyvale, the Valley suburb where Goodell grew up in the late 1970s, proves grimly ironic as his father, a failed landscape contractor, dives into an emotional tailspin after a 1979 divorce and eventually succumbs to lung cancer. His mother, meanwhile, suffers scars from a burnt-out marriage she never wanted. The centerpiece of the book is Goodell's "nightmare of co-dependency" with his wildly unstable younger brother, a promising musician who pickled himself with alcohol before he was ravaged by AIDS. Caught in the middle of it all, Goodell describes himself as a vacant lot polluted by family toxins; this memoir is his remediation project, an attempt to sift through the lingering emotional sludge in search of some purifying understanding of the family's implosion. While the high-tech Valley subtext is not without interest (Apple gurus Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak make cameo appearances), Goodell's real subject is the paternal negligence that was carried from father to son through three generations in his family. Now a successful journalist in New York with children of his own, Goodell writes with more raw power than literary polish, ending with a hopeful vow to break the cycle of dysfunctional dads. Agent, Flip Brophy. 5-city tour. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Just when we were starting to think that everybody in Silicon Valley must be a carefree gazillionaire, Goodell comes along to root us in reality with this sobering portrait of his dysfunctional Sunnyvale, CA. Goodell (The Cyberthief and the Samurai), a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, presents a moving memoir of his family's growth and disintegration over the last 40 years, paradoxically juxtaposed against the screaming, relentless drive to wealth and success in his hometown, which happens to be in the middle of Silicon Valley. From the belly of the beast comes a mindful story that will resonate with countless thousands of other families as they struggle with multiple divorces, alcohol and drug abuse, parent-child identity traumas, and emotionally distant relatives. While certainly not as extraordinary a memoir as Mary Karr's The Liar's Club (LJ 6/1/95), this heartfelt yet respectful family portrait is an admirable addition to the rapidly growing ranks of books that cathartically write out the traumas of the past. It's useful to be reminded how bound we are to family and how common family anguish is, permeating even the gilt-edged homes in Silicon Valley.DDale Farris, Groves, TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

A very powerful, beautifully written book about family
Silicon Valley provides an eerie backdrop for this book, which is about family, and the disappointments, tragedies and shattered expectations that are so much a part of family life. Goodell takes the wood to the media hype about Silicon Valley as a place of unbounded wealth and joy, but that isn't the point of this book, which reviewers are correctly calling harrowing and beautiful. The target is family life, and our universal search to come to terms with the things that happen to our families. In Goodell's case, his family fell apart after his parents were divorced, and his brother brought a painful tragedy to what was a sad and difficult situation. This book reads like a terrific mystery, which is what it is. Why does tragedy strike our loved ones, how should we respond, and how can we move on? Goodell deals with these questions in wonderfully frank and beautifully written ways. This transcends memoir and speaks very powerfully to anybody who wrestles with the question of family. Personally, I found the juxtaposition of the Goodell family tragedy against the explosion of wealth and greed in Silicon Valley to be a very powerful combination. I felt I was reading the "Perfect Storm" set in the hopelessly naive expectations of an oblivious, helpless California family on the eve of one of the greatest explosions of wealth and cultural change in history. Great book for any parent and any kid.

Not just a Silicon Valley divorce story
Loved this book. The author has an unnerving talent to wrap you completely into his family. I couldn't put this book down and hated for it to end. This is one book that will stick with me for a while.

The Silicon Valley aspect is secondary. This is the true tale of what all too commonly happens to children of divorce. Jeff's mother decides she no longer wants to be married. It's time for HER to have fun--she immerses herself in her career (which she has started before her divorce) and loves the dating scene. No longer putting her children first, they drift. Drugs, sex, no real place to call home, and no one to truly parent them. Jeff is the least impacted--already out of high school, he flees Silicon Valley and later enrolls in Berkeley. Jeff brother Jerry doesn't come out so lucky. Jeff's young sister Jill lives her life as she pleases--stays out all night, drops out of school. Mom continues to be more concerned about her own fun. Dad is still around, lost on his own, and seemingly unable to provide much emotional support for his kids.

Maybe part of my attraction to this book lies in the similarities to my own life. I suppose many would find this book a depressing read. I found it encouraging to see Jeff and Jill land on their feet and lead their own productive lives.

Reality check
This story could be centered just about anywhere. The reviewer from Sunnyvale aside (why so defensive?), this is a treatise on falling outside the clique in today's America. Whether the setting is Silicon Valley, Orange County, Fairfax County, Cambridge, etc... this writing hits home with more of us than we might like to admit. Whether it be computers, day trading, e-tailing, whatever the fast moving hot thing is, this book illustrates how easily such "progress" can wrench a family apart and leave behind wreckage and despair. Dear old Dad loves his time honored trade, dotes on his family and basically is a good but rather boring guy. Mom comes alive when she discovers an exciting place to work and this is the death knell for the traditional family. Sound familiar? Reverse the roles and it still applies. The beauty of this book is the relevance and honesty of it. Goodell doesn't need to exaggerate anything... many of us have lived through or are living through similar things. Personally, I like Michele and Leonard... even though Leonard reminds me a little too much of my own mentors. This book might make you think, but most likely it will make you nod your head thinking "I can relate". Should you, dear reader, be one of the decreasing numbers of people in a stable, well orderd family, this will be a somewhat voyeuristic read but very informative. Definitely worth the time.