The Last Best Thing: A Classic Tale of Greed, Deception, and Mayhem in Silicon Valley

This book was originally a weekly humor column crossed with a low-grade soap opera, and as light farce and satire of Silicon Valley characters, companies, and customs, it succeeds cleverly. Of course, the author knows virtually nothing about technology (or at least ignored it in the book), the characters are tissue-thin, and the plot is ridiculous. In a farce, these are not bad things. This book makes even lightweight stuff like Po Bronson's "The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest" look like a scholarly disseration, which is not, again a bad thing (considering Bronson's questionable grasp of tech--though his book is good, too). At very least, it's a fast read and you'll get a better feel for the absurdities of Silicon Valley.

Dillon peppers this high camp tale with a combination of both real and loosely veiled references to industry luminaries and key events. The quasi-serious tone gets a bit tiresome at times, but for anyone familiar with the vendor end of information technology, this book accomplishes an hilarious send-up of every cliche and vice that plagues modern Silicon Valley.