This huge book gives three intermingled histories. Overall, it is a long, detailed, and loving biography of Fred Terman (1900-1982), a brilliant, accomplished, but unassuming electrical engineer; inspiring educator; and visionary and successful university executive. Woven into this biography is an account of the post-World War II transformation of Stanford University, from an academic country club into a world-class university, a transformation that Terman initiated, led, and hammered into shape. Finally, Gillmor explains how Terman’s foresight, support, and astute selection of people and companies brought about Silicon Valley, a newspaperman’s term that first appeared three years after Terman’s retirement; it was never accepted by him, but his name and fame are now welded to it.

The three histories are well written, deeply researched, extremely detailed, and supported by a mass of references. One could not hope for a better or more interesting triple biography, but the author’s admiration for Terman has caused him to write a Whig history, in which everything moves forward smoothly, in which Terman has no flaws, and never makes a mistake, and in which every criticism of Terman and his works is brushed aside or contradicted. I have always admired Terman. He was great, but not this great.

The book recounts how a university worked at the time, and how the post-World War II military cornucopia of money could be used to build a discipline, in this case, electrical engineering, and a university. There was nothing shady about it. What was involved were clear goals, good planning, and quick seizure of opportunity without a lot of academic shuffling and scuffling.

The description of how Terman got Stanford into computing is short but useful. Just after the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was unveiled, he did not set out to build a computer in the electrical engineering department, as too many other universities did, but instead started what he called “a steeple of excellence,” by bringing in George Forsythe to head a temporary division of computer science (mostly statistics) within the mathematics department. As Terman had planned, the division grew into an independent department, with an outstanding faculty that he had seduced from the East Coast with the California climate, gold, and tenure.

The book is recommended to all friends and admirers of Terman, Stanford, and Silicon Valley, and as a source for explanations of why Silicon Valley worked while its several imitators failed.