by Jeff Goodell
First published 2001
Jeff Goodell grows up on Meadowlark Lane in Sunnyvale, California, during 1979. His family lives peacefully in what will become the heart of Silicon Valley. The digital boom arrives over the next ten years and tears the Goodells apart. His parents divorce, splitting the family down the middle. Jeff and his siblings spiral toward destruction as their world changes around them. Their mother lands a job at a small company with a colorful rainbow logo called Apple and achieves success she never imagined. Their father owns a landscaping business but refuses to adapt to new technology and watches his livelihood disappear. The family fractures along the same lines as the old world and the new. Jeff must navigate between his parents' opposing paths while Silicon Valley reshapes everything he knows. This is the story of one family caught in the crossfire of technological change and the price they pay for living at the center of a digital transformation.
Genres: family-life, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, fish-out-of-water
Setting: California, Sunnyvale
Period: 1979, 1980s
272 pages · Paperback · Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group