Money from Thin Air: The Story of Craig McCaw, the Visionary Who Invented the Cell Phone Industry, and His Next Billion-Dollar Idea

McCaw may not have invented cellular communications, but he earned his place at the top of the industry as one of the first entrepreneurs who believed that the public would embrace mobile phones. In this lively biography, Corr, a reporter for the Seattle Times, chronicles the Seattle native's odyssey, which began after his college graduation in 1973, when he bought a small cable television company in rural Washington and built it into one of the largest cable operations in the country. As he expanded his empire, he kept a watchful eye on the fledgling cellular industry. When the government began auctioning off franchises in 1984, McCaw jumped into the frenzy. With the financing from of Michael Milken's junk bonds, he spent the next several years buying as many cellular licenses as possible. Always just a step ahead of bankruptcy, he sold his cellular company to AT&T in 1994 for $12.6 billion after it became clear that McCaw Communications didn't have the resources to compete with better-financed telecommunications giants. Corr does a solid job of capturing the Wild West spirit of the mobile phone industry's early days, when there were few rules and fewer business models. He's less successful, though, in describing McCaw's current venture, a partnership with Bill Gates and others to launch a satellite communications network. While Corr touches on McCaw's relationships with his parents and brothers, this is first and foremost a story about McCaw's obsession with creating a cellular phone powerhouse. Agent, Kris Dahl of ICM. Author tour. (May)