Sprawling and sometimes unruly, Geissinger’s narrative still offers a perceptive early look at the volatile present and...
Enthusiastic overview of the “virtual currency” known as Bitcoin, focused on its complex technology and the outsized personalities who have advanced it.
Geissinger is a technical writer and contributor of fiction to literary journals, and both specialties inform his debut. His account of bitcoin’s rise is thoughtful and generally precise yet sometimes convoluted, with frequent digressions on topics such as the histories of fiat currency and libertarian philosophy. He first explains the operational parameters of bitcoin by offering several levels of detail, explaining, “a lot of what makes Bitcoin new and interesting is rooted in the details [yet] knowledge of the nitty-gritty isn’t required to use or transmit bitcoins.” The author establishes solid ground in explaining for neophytes the radical aspects of bitcoin, which derive from cryptographic principles and utilize both individual “e-wallets” and a “public ledger” of all transactions. “Without something tangible to steal, he writes, “it can’t be stolen.” However, Geissinger’s main focus is on individuals who have propelled the stealthy narrative of bitcoin’s development, starting with its secretive, enigmatic founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, who may be a real person, a pseudonym, or even a group of people. More notoriously, Ross Ulbricht founded an online hub for illicit drug sales, Silk Road, and became ensnared in a self-made fantasy of libertarian independence, fueled by bitcoins, resulting in conviction on many charges: “Silk Road [became] not just a marketplace for voluntary transactions but a philosophical rebuke to heavy-handed and ever-increasing statism.” Contrastingly, the comparably fortunate Winklevoss brothers (of Facebook infamy) may yet bring the virtual currency out of the shadows: “their relatively early investment in the currency has already paid off in millions...[they] are mainstreaming Bitcoin.” Unsurprisingly (given the recent collapse of some bitcoin “exchanges”), the youthful hypercapitalists are now advocating increased regulation of bitcoin, which the author concludes will accelerate the cybercurrency’s eventual economic impact.
Sprawling and sometimes unruly, Geissinger’s narrative still offers a perceptive early look at the volatile present and seemingly inevitable future of “crypto-currency.”Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1633881440
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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