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Book Review: Idea Man by Paul Allen

The Mercer Island resident gives the reader an unprecedented look into his life in an autobiography that is available starting today, April 19.

Despite “60 Minutes’” Leslie Stahl calling Island resident Paul Allen a “bitter billionaire"—and saying his book “draws a dark portrait of his co-founder (Bill Gates)”—Idea Man reads like the reminiscences of a positive, forward-thinking computer nerd whose passion for engineering and invention led him to develop, with his Lakeside School classmate Bill Gates, what is widely considered the most famous computer operating system in the world.

“I felt I should just tell it like it happened … this has nothing to do with the many wonderful things Bill (Gates) has done … I wanted to see if I could do it and hopefully be alive to see it published.” —Paul Allen, “60 Minutes,” April 17, 2011.

Idea Man is a polished, surprisingly easy read in Allen's debut as a writer. However, the book is not a diatribe against Bill Gates with Allen unleashing years of pent-up anger; it is more about his life, his passions, medical challenges and relationships. If you're not an engineer or don't have a technical background, you will be skimming portions of the memoir, but overall it is a fascinating look into the life of Mercer Island's wealthiest denizen.

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The son of two Oklahoma librarians, Allen wrote the book chronologically, detailing what could only be considered an idyllic childhood spent reading science fiction adventure stories, experimenting with chemistry sets and other electronic projects with a Van de Graaff generator kit. Allen gazed in amazement at the exhibits of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, bought a beginner's book on computers and built a light-activated robot called the “Electronic Paramecium” with a friend at a science fair.

“In the Allen household, children were treated like grown-ups. Our parents encouraged us at whatever we tried, and exposed us to Bach and jazz and flamenco, but it was more than that. They respected us as individuals who needed to find our own place in the world.”

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Though obviously brighter than all his other elementary school classmates, Allen wanted “nothing to do with” the prestigious private Lakeside School, not just because it was an all-boys school, but because it was full of rich kids that he couldn’t relate to, all of whom had social skills Allen lacked. Fortunately, Allen developed a love of rock guitar, early computers and Teletype machines at Lakeside, where he met a skinny younger lad named Bill Gates, who was equally fascinated by math and computer science.

“You could tell three things about Bill Gates pretty quickly. He was really smart, he was really competitive; he wanted to show you how smart he was. And he was really, really persistent. After that first time, he kept coming back. Many times he and I would be the only ones there. Soon I was spending every lunchtime and free period around the Teletype .... Others might have found us eccentric, but I didn’t care. I had discovered my calling. I was a programmer.”

The duo worked together to build “Traf-O-Data” software and other programs in college, while watching "blaxploitation" movies and driving too fast.

“That person, (my mother said) is an edge walker," he wrote. "Where I was wary of physical danger, Bill seemed to enjoy it.”

By the time they were ready to go into business together in Albuquerque, NM, writing computer programs, Allen and Gates were fast friends, though their management styles were opposites: Gates preferring to aggressively push employees into working around the clock, and Allen being a more laid-back person who believed any problem could be solved with reason and discussion.

Fledgling company Microsoft, so named by Allen, moved to Bellevue, WA, because both Allen and Gates missed their families. The company went into overdrive creating new and better software for the infant home computer market.

“Bill consciously aspired to be “hardcore”… he’d gulp Cokes and work in his office deep into the night, and come in the next day cranky and bloodshot.” When a colleague mentioned he planned to take the day off, Gates responded,  “Why would you want to do that?” When IBM rolled out its first PC in 1981, it was running on MS-DOS software.

As Microsoft added employees and became more successful, Allen recounts that Gates became more volatile, engaging in shouting matches and “pitiless dissections of what he thought everyone else was doing wrong.”

“Bill … wanted to be viewed as tough but fair. He could be callous and rude, but had a warmer, human side, too, and no one doubted that his excesses for good or ill, were spontaneous. When Bill blew his stack at a meeting, it was never merely for effect. He didn’t always notice when he pushed too hard. When someone threatened to quit, Bill took it personally and did all he could to change the person's mind. Whenever we locked horns, I’d have to raise my intensity and blood pressure to meet Bill’s, and it was taking a toll. Some people can vent their anger and … let it go, but I wasn’t one of them. My sinking morale sapped my enthusiasm for work.”

When Allen became ill with Hodgkin’s disease—a form of blood cancer—his productivity naturally decreased, and Allen knew he was living on borrowed time at Microsoft. He left Microsoft, traveled in Europe for a time, mourned his father’s passing at age 61, founded Vulcan Inc. and the Paul Allen Family Foundation. He eventually found his way back to Microsoft, too, by rejoining the company's board of directors in 1990, and was a member of Gates’ wedding party in 1995. 

“After he became a family man, we found a pattern not uncommon among old friends … we’d fall into old rhythms, that high-bandwidth exchange of ideas, a reminder of our once-powerful bond.”

Allen bought the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers, the Seattle Seahawks and created the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. He also founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a nonprofit project designed to map the human brain. Due to his long love of science fiction, he became involved in SpaceShipOne, the first manned private space flight. Allen was listed among Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2007 and 2008, with his philanthropic donations having reached over a billion dollars.

In 2009, when Allen was diagnosed with stage IV non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he found that one of his most regular visitors in that period was Bill Gates.

"He was everything you’d want from a friend, caring and concerned. I was reminded of the complexity of our relationship and how we always rooted for each other, even when we were barely speaking.”

Allen said on “60 Minutes” that he knows Gates has read his book, and at some point, he is sure they will sit down and talk about it together. “I’m sure it will be a heated discussion.” But will Allen apologize to Gates?

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I feel this book is an important piece of technology history, when I tell it like it happened, and I hope people respect that.”

Paul Allen will be speaking about Idea Man at Town Hall in Seattle on Friday, April 22, from 7:30-9 p.m. Tickets are $5.

The book is available at

Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft
By Paul Allen
Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin Books
346 pages
Publication date: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59184-382-5

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