Review: In Search of Stupidity

I finished reading In Search of Stupidity , a Christmas gift, a few days ago. It was a very enjoyable book, although I expected no less with a recommendation from JoelOnSoftware . It was especially interesting to me, because not only was the analysis new to me, but so were the historical situations. Being a Mac geek, I've read a lot of books about Apple and the Macintosh, such as the Mac Bathroom Reader and Insanely Great , but I don't know much about the origins of the PC industry. In Search of Stupidity filled me in on companies like Ashton-Tate, Borland, and MicroPro, and their faded glory. I also learned about IBM's bungling of the PS/2 and OS/2, which means I should be able to engage in more conversations with Phil. :-) The analysis in this book was fascinating, particularly when you see just how stupid some of the decisions made by these companies were. For example, it seems obvious that you don't want to sell two products that do the same thing at the same price point. Yet, this has happened multiple times in PC history, ruining companies. This book makes a good case for the position that in order to succeed, you don't have to be smarter than everyone else, you just have to be less stupid.