Hard Drive

James Wallace and Jim Erickson's 1992 biography of Bill Gates — covering his early life, the founding of Microsoft, the IBM deal, and his competitive business practices — one of the first serious accounts of Gates before Microsoft's full dominance.

Provides the primary journalistic account of Gates's early competitive behavior — the DOS acquisition, the IBM deal structure, the competitive tactics against rivals — documenting the relentless, sometimes ethically aggressive business practices that built Microsoft.