cover image The Leap: A Memoir of Love and Madness in the Internet Gold Rush

The Leap: A Memoir of Love and Madness in the Internet Gold Rush

Tom Ashbrook. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $26 (295pp) ISBN 978-0-395-76165-6

In 1996, after 12 years as an international reporter and top editor at the Boston Globe, Ashbrook reconnected with his old college roommate, Rolly Rouse, to begin a quixotic project: a CD-ROM architectural pattern book that would allow baby boomers to design their own homes. While at Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship that allowed him to explore his interests, Ashbrook used his newfound free time to work on the project and later decided to make the ""leap from security to risk"" and devote himself to it fully, despite the economic uncertainty for his family (including three kids) and his wife's recurring doubts. He and Rouse raised some money from family and friends, recruited a few staffers, vaulted into a new world of venture capitalists and partnership disputes and morphed into an Internet company, HomePortfolio.com. Momentum and tension build as the partners scramble for connections, run out of money and Ashbrook's marriage frays. Ultimately, credit cards, fortuitous funding and a dash of New York Times publicity save the day: Ashbrook's too-short epilogue tells us that HomePortfolio.com grew enormously. Though his company is more impressive as an entrepreneurial effort than as a revolutionary creation, Ashbrook's leap wasn't really about money. As he told his wife, it was ""about wanting to feel really, really alive."" His book may not range as broadly (or offer as much dish) as Michael Wolff's Burn Rate, but it certainly captures the manic energy of midlife Internet dreams. Author tour. (May)