The Key to the Universe

I grew up in a single-parent household back in the 70's before computers and startups were the thing they are now and although my mom was an uneducated immigrant, I was fortunate to grow up in the bay area and get an education at a good public school where my teachers introduced me to Harold Jacobs's "Geometry" Nietziche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing The Universe" Nigel Calder's "The Key to the Universe" Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach" I especially loved spending time in the library, reading OMNI magazine, Scientific American magazine (especially Martin Gardner's column) and the stories of Issac Asimov and Larry Niven. Those authors made me want to go to college and learn from people like them - people capable of thinking big ideas about science and civilization - and while none of those books ever helped me raise money or start a business, they did help me help me overcome my personal feelings of inadequacy from having come from a poor family and eventually become accepted into a technical community which appreciated an ability to think and ask questions.