How the Internet Happened by Brian McCullough

I really enjoyed this book but let’s get something out of the way: the title is incredibly misleading. Upon seeing it, you might assume this book is a technical history of how the internet came to be. This is not that. But McCullough still provides a rich history of the world the internet ushered in: startups, Silicon Valley, and the Dot-com boom/bust.

I doubt this book will appeal much to anyone who was old enough to remember the period of 1990-2005 in the US and kept up with tech news of the time. But, seeing as how I was only born in 1998 and didn’t really start getting interested in technology until I was a teenager, this book provides a great 10,000 foot overview. It was like reading the origin story of the technological world as I know it now. Plus it helped to explain why Silicon Valley is what it is today.