Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode The Internet Out Of Idaho, Jon Katz; Villard

“Jesse and Eric were roommates in the tiny town of Caldwell, Idaho, nineteen-year-old working class kids eking out a living with their seven-dollar-an-hour jobs selling and fixing computers. College was never in the cards. Their families had been torn apart by divorce and hard times, separation and illness. They had almost no social lives, and little to look forward to. Geeks is the story of how Jesse and Eric—and others like them—used technology to try and change their lives and alter their destiny.”
Robin’s Note: This is an intriguing memoir about two guys who became part of the dotcom boom in the 1990s, and gives a strong portrait of the time and place that allowed them to escape their fate trapped in a small town with no community outside message boards.  The rise of the internet and internet business is featured in this book, and it’s fascinating to see how much the world has changed since in terms of both the Internet and in terms of the opportunities technology still brings.