Synopses & Reviews
Tom Perkins had a dream. It wasn't to get rich, acquire power, or marry into fame. As the man most responsible for creating Silicon Valley, he had done all that. His venture-capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, remains the most celebrated money machine since the Medicis. He'd helped found Genentech and fund Google. And in 2006 his resignation from the Hewlett-Packard board triggered the revelation of a spying scandal that dominated the front pages. Along the way, he also managed to get himself convicted of manslaughter in France and become Danielle Steel's Husband No. 5.
No, as he hit his seventies, Perkins wanted to create the biggest, fastest, riskiest, highest-tech, most self-indulgent sailboat ever—the "perfect yacht." His fantasy would be a modern clipper ship—as long as a football field, forty-two feet wide, with three masts each rising twenty stories toward the heavens. This $130 million square-rigger—The Maltese Falcon—would evoke the era of magnificent vessels that raced across the oceans in the nineteenth century. But the Falcon is more than a tribute to the past. Gone are all the deckhands to climb the yardarms. Gone is the intricate rigging that helped give the square-riggers of yore their impressive look. Instead, the Falcon's giant carbon-fiber masts are entirely freestanding and rotate by computer. The bridge looks like something out of Star Trek. And the fifteen huge sails unfurl at the touch of a screen. In short, this is a revolutionary machine—the most significant advance in sailing in 150 years.
With keen storytelling and biting wit, Newsweek's David A. Kaplan takes us behind the scenes of an extraordinary project and inside the mind of a larger-than-life character. We discover why any sane man would gamble a sizeable chunk of his net worth on a boat; we meet the cast of engineers who conspired with him; and we learn about the other two monumental yachts just built by gazillionaires that Perkins is ever eyeing. In a battle of egos on the high seas, Perkins loves to preen, "Mine's better! Mine's Bigger!" On the Falcon's climactic maiden voyage across the Mediterranean—sixteen hundred nautical miles from Istanbul to Malta to the Riviera—we revel with Perkins as his creation surges along at record-breaking speeds.
This is the biography of a remarkable boat and the man who built it. More than a tale of technology, Mine's Bigger is a profile of ambition, hubris, and the imagination of a legendary entrepreneur.
Review
“An exhilarating account of how Tom Perkins...created ‘the perfect yacht...the Maltese Falcon.” American Heritage
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“Perkins two worlds--high-stakes, big-ego, cutting-edge sailing technology, and high-stakes, big-ego corporate politics--are inextricably linked in MINES BIGGER.” New York Post
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“Inspired.” Denver Rocky Mountain News
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“The man, his ego and his boat are examined with insight and precision.” Forbes
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“I opened Mr. Kaplans book with a great deal of interest; I was not disappointed.” Pete Du Pont, former governor of Delaware, The Wall Street Journal
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“Engaging and revealing…brought vividly to life by the adept Kaplan....” --Daniel Okrent, Fortune
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“...definitely worth the read.” USA Today
Synopsis
Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist behind such companies as Google, Genentech, Amazon, and AOL, doesn't do things halfway. When he collected vintage cars, for instance, he had the world's largest collection of Bugatti automobiles. And when he decided to pursue a lifelong dream and build a sailing yacht, he went the whole nine yards: He decided it would be the world's largest yachtandndash;big enough to fit Noah's Ark on its deck. He wanted it to sail at a record 26 knots, under unprecedented physical forces. And, he thought, having built this marine wonder, why not use it to try to smash the 155andndash;yearandndash;old world sailing record from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn?
Thus the Maltese Falconandndash;the largest private sailing vessel ever constructedandndash;was born.
Perkins is a sailor as well as a dreamer, and he loves the romantic idea of sailingandndash;and the magnificent ships of yore with names like Cutty Sark and Sea Witch that conjured up images of speed and danger. So Perkins set out to build "the perfect yacht"andndash;as long as a football field, 42 feet wide, and with three masts so tall they will just fit under the great suspension bridges of the world. The Maltese Falcon, as he's dubbed his ship (since its home berth will be Malta), will use technology no clipper skipper ever imaginedandndash;a rig with no sheets, no stays, no halyardsandndash;just freeandndash;standing, rotating carbon fiber masts with 18 sails surging freely in the wind. At $87 million, it will be a technological marvelandndash;as complex as the man himself. The famed Perini Navi yard in Turkey put the Falcon in the water in 2006, ready for sea trials.
There is some competition to the title of the grandest yacht of allandndash;the Athena (being built by Netscape founder Jim Clark) and the Mirabella V (being built by Avis Car Rental magnate Joe Vittoria). Athena will be the largest sloop, and Mirabella V the largest schooner. But the Maltese Falcon will be a marvel of mechanics, engineering, and techonology, married with the romance of the age of sail, dressed out in the finest accommodations money can buy and the human mind can imagine. More than just the story of the boat, The Falcon is a broader profile of the combination of ambition, recklessness, bravado, and achievements of a 21st century entrepreneur and his time.
About the Author
David A. Kaplan is a senior editor at Newsweek. He is the author of The Silicon Boys, a national bestseller that has been translated into six languages. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, various Op-Ed pages, Parenting, and Food & Wine. A graduate of Cornell and the New York University School of Law, he lives with his wife and two sons in Irvington, New York.