In this revealing biography -- based on in-depth study and interviews with Microsoft insiders -- Fredric Alan Maxwell provides the complete, controversial narrative of one of the technology industry's most influential, talked-about figures: Steven Anthony Ballmer, the awkward Detroit Country Day School valedictorian who rose to become Microsoft's president, and in the past two years, its CEO. Together with Bill Gates, Ballmer leads the company he and Gates took from less than 30 employees to some 50,000, and annual revenues from $12 million to more than $20 billion and rising. A balanced portrait, this book reveals the good boy Ballmer -- the dedicated son who once took three months off to care for his ailing parents, and the bad boy Ballmer -- the ruthless businessman who at the same time devised and led a scorched earth policy against other software developers, a policy that earned him the nickname "The Em-balmer."
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