It was the 20th century Gold Rush. From the hobby shops and backwoods they came—eccentrics, prodigies, flimnammers, and entrepreneurs—to create the explosive, lucrative business of personal-computer software. They were a small group who took their obscure hobbies and became catalysts for the information revolution. Some made it big—making millions of dollars overnight. Others lost it all. This is their story—a chronicle from the inside written by Doug Carlston, a man who experienced the Gold Rush era first-hand, created a multi-million dollar software company, and watched a he industry giants collapsed all around him. He gives a personal account of the programmers, adventurers, and down-home tinkerers who gave fuel to the personal computer's rise and triggered their own fall. Here you'll meet them all— the victims and survivors—and discover the factors and events that resulted in both. Douglas G. Carlston is one of the prominent players in the software industry, as he and his brother Gary founded Broderbund Software, the largest consumer software publisher in the U.S., located in San Rafael, California