For Patrons of Pioneer Heritage Library

Summary and Reviews of How the Internet Happened by Brian McCullough

How the Internet Happened by Brian McCullough

How the Internet Happened

From Netscape to the iPhone

by Brian McCullough
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 23, 2018, 400 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Tech-guru Brian McCullough delivers a rollicking history of the internet, why it exploded, and how it changed everything.

The internet was never intended for you, opines Brian McCullough in this lively narrative of an era that utterly transformed everything we thought we knew about technology. In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first "dotcom."

Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape's Marc Andreessen and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough also reveals surprising quirks and unknown tales as he tracks both the technology and the culture around the internet's rise. Cinematic in detail and unprecedented in scope, the result both enlightens and informs as it draws back the curtain on the new rhythm of disruption and innovation the internet fostered, and helps to redefine an era that changed every part of our lives.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

McCullough tells the human side of the Internet story, the blind rush toward the next big thing and the rapid successes and failures along the way. This well-researched and well-curated history provides just the right amount of detail to keep the reader engaged and connected to the stories of those involved...continued

Full Review (901 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, log in with your library card.

(Reviewed by Chris Fredrick).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



The Internet Era: Did You Know?

Jerry Yang and David Filo, creators of Yahoo, in 1994 while studying at StanfordIn How the Internet Happened, author Brian McCullough provides details about the visionaries and startups that created the modern iteration of the Internet, giving his account character and dimension and providing a more complete picture of Internet-era history. Here are a few such details:

  • The term "information superhighway" didn't originally refer to the Internet, but to interactive television. Early visionaries believed that all technologies would converge into a single device, but they believed that the device would be the TV.
  • The directory project that became Yahoo! was started by two Stanford Ph.D. students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, who were living in a trailer, eating lots of pizza and supposedly writing their ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Please log in with your library card.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked How the Internet Happened, try these:

  • Big Vape jacket

    Big Vape

    by Jamie Ducharme

    Published 2022

    About this book

    A propulsive, eye-opening work of reporting, chronicling the rise of Juul and the birth of a new addiction.

  • Chilled jacket

    Chilled

    by Tom Jackson

    Published 2016

    About this book

    The refrigerator may seem mundane nowadays, but it is one of the wonders of twentieth-century science - lifesaver, food preserver, social liberator.

Full access to read-alikes is for subscribers only. Please log in with your library card for full information.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
    by Evie Woods
    From the million-copy bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

Who Said...

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..