There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Brutus, from Julius Caesar

Jim Clark made a fortune with Silicon Graphics, went on to found Netscape and is now busy cornering the online US healthcare market and is now about to unionise America's wealthiest people with MyCFO.

Shakespeare's quote, if one goes by the portrait painted by Michael Lewis, fits Mr Clark like a mouse in hand. Here is a man who is driven to succeed, whose idea of hell would be to languish in the shallows where the bulk of humanity paddle. And who caught all the tides at the right time.

But, according to Lewis, Clark's driving forces are not the usual ones of money, power and executive lunches with the great and good, rather it is a manic fear of boredom. Clark, born in a poor Texan family, was a navy reject when he discovered a genius for mathematics which eventually led him, via a couple of marriages and laybys in academia to Silicon Valley, the slice of land in California which is to the computer industry what the Vatican is to the Catholic Church. He formed Silicon Grpahics and learned the lessons that would inform the rest of his working life: (a) never let the venture capitalists and the salaritariat get their hands on the levers of power (2) engineers (a la Karl Marx) should control the means of production (3) don't waste your time bucking Microsoft's monopoly, find your own. Having left Silicon Graphics, bruised from his rough encounter with the above principles, he set up Netscape and made a fortune, rewarded the engineers and had his revenge on the bankers and managers who had made his life a (relative) misery. Michael Lewis, author of the superb Liar's Poker, uses Clark as metaphor for the booming, frontier world that is the Internet and related activities.

Clark, according to Lewis, embodies all the traits of the business; anarchic, fast-moving, innovative and elitist and he uses his protagonist to explore the seemingly ephemeral yet hugely significant business and cultural paradigm being constructed before our, mostly, uncomprehending eyes. This is a fluidly written, entertaining and authoritative work. A must for those interested in a revolution and the revolutionary currently altering the way we live.