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No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet Hardcover – September 10, 2013


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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 264 pages
  • Publisher: Da Capo Press (September 10, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0306821664
  • ISBN-13: 978-0306821660
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In the mid-1990s, when the Internet was beginning to attract exponentially more users, its architects were faced with surfing logjams that threatened to slow web traffic to a crawl. ­Offering one solution to the bottleneck, a group of MIT professors and grad students adapted inventive math algorithms for computer networks and earned rich rewards after forming Akamai Technologies. One key member of Akamai’s team was Daniel Lewin, whose life was tragically cut short on 9/11 at 31 when the plane he was on crashed into the World Trade Center. In recounting Lewin’s little-known but thoroughly captivating life story, journalist Raskin paints a portrait of a larger-than-life math genius who impressed everyone around him with his boundless energy and charisma. Before attending MIT, Lewin spent four years in the Israeli army’s counterterrorism unit, a background that Lewin almost certainly drew on when he tried to stop the terrorists on American Airlines Flight 11, making him 9/11’s first hero and victim. A superlatively written and well-deserved tribute to an overlooked Internet pioneer and true American hero. --Carl Hays

Review

Kirkus Reviews, 8/1/13
“Bittersweet but celebratory.”

Booklist, 9/1/13
“Little-known but thoroughly captivating life story… A superlatively written and well-deserved tribute to an overlooked internet pioneer and true American hero.”

Tablet Magazine, 9/11/13
“[A] terrific new biography.”

Winnipeg Free Press, 9/9/13
"No Better Time is the chronicle of a man who gave his life to technology and gave his life for mankind."

The Daily Beast, 9/17/13
“This is Lewin’s fascinating biography, but it is also a history of the Internet, and those who took it from clunky dial-up service to the speed-of-light marvel. It is also the story of the September 11 attacks themselves, and how they ground the exuberance of the 1990s to a halt. Raskin has meticulously reconstructed the buoyancy of the ’90s dot-com boom, and her restraint in covering the attacks lends a sober poignancy to Lewin’s story.”

BusinessInsider.com, 11/7/13
“Awesome…I recommend it for any entrepreneur out there either working on a company or thinking about starting a company… Molly Knight Raskin, writes beautifully, deeply, and thoughtfully. She combines an origin story (for Akamai), a coming of age story (for Lewin), and a tragedy (for Lewin, his family, his extended family, and Akamai.) …[A] great biography of an entrepreneur, his company, and his all too short life.”

Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2013
“An engaging tale of a continent-straddling and action-packed but all-too-short life. Raskin’s story of one man’s stunning success also elicits a nostalgia for the excitement of those years—when the Internet was new.”

Customer Reviews

The book is extremely well written - a very compelling read.
D. Gibbs
The main fault is that the book is a little spotty, a little superficial.
Edward Durney
Ordering the book immediately in kindle version, I began to read.
books galore

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful By scot16897 VINE VOICE on June 29, 2013
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
Even though I'm not usually a biography reader, I wanted to learn about an unknown pioneer of the Internet, whose vision changed the way the Internet operated. By itself, that is a worthwhile story to tell. But this story is so much more than that because of how life actually intervened.

Danny Lewin was a driven genius whose personality and passion made him excel at everything, from fitness to the military, to academia. This drive and ability led him to pursue a PhD at MIT, and during these studies, he designed an algorithm that transformed the way data flows on the Internet. With his mentor and a group of close confidantes, Lewin entered the dot-com industry... a small group of academics who became a multi-billion dollar company, Akamai. (If you've never heard of it, neither had I, but we've used it's customers, including Amazon.)

Akamai was a titan carrying huge amounts of data for websites, but almost went under during the dot-com bust, as clients disappeared. There were layoffs and the company was months away from closing its doors for good. Lewin never relented, and created a new product to allow websites to better bring streaming video and other high-bandwidth data to consumers. In many ways, this allowed the multi-media forum that the Internet has become. On September 11, 2001, Lewin died on a plane that flew into the World Trade Center, and was apparently stabbed to death before the crash. Reading the kind of person he was, it was very likely he was fighting the terrorists when he fell.

Had the story ended there, it would be a tragedy... and it is tragic...
Read more ›
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful By D. Gibbs on September 11, 2013
Format: Hardcover
When I first heard that Molly was writing a book about Danny, I was worried. Danny was a Titan - unbelievably energetic; completely driven; crazy, scary smart; and very, very cool - a lot of fun to be around. But he was not perfect.

Danny was impatient and extremely demanding, bordering on (and often exceeding) being unreasonable. This lead to friction. I had lunch with one of the members of the Akamai Sales team last week. She still bristles when recounting Danny's, "You people suck!" comments.

My primary concern about the book was whether or not Molly could do Danny justice and create an accurate, balanced portrayal. I am happy to say that she did an excellent job capturing the time, Akamai, Tom, and Danny. The book is extremely well written - a very compelling read. I could not put it down, staying up `til 3:00AM to finish it. And the end was very, very hard to read.

As for whether or not the statement that Danny transformed the internet is overstated, I'll make two points:
-- If it were not for Akamai, all the major US news sites would have been completely down on 9/11 and for days thereafter.
-- Today Akamai carries 30% of all internet traffic.

Is that the mark of a transformational creation? I guess it's a subjective call.

Bottom line: This is a fantastic book about a great man who did amazing things during his short time.

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful By Joel Avrunin TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 13, 2013
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
Most people haven't heard of Danny Lewin, but I recently saw a bunch of stories about him on my Facebook feed, so I thought it would be interesting to learn more about his life. This book is more than just the tale of an inventor and entrepreneur that died on 9/11, but a remarkable life tale even before the invention of Akamai. Danny Lewin's family made aliyah (moved to Israel) when he was already a teenager, so he grew up partly in the US and partly in Israel. While having grown up without speaking a word of Hebrew, he worked to assimilate well enough into Israeli society that he was able to gain entrance into the elite Sayeret Matkal in the IDF. The book obviously cannot contain too many details on what he did while part of these special forces, but it paints of picture of what kind of person he was to be able to join such an elite team. The team required not only strength, but smarts to carry out difficult missions behind enemy lines often without exact orders.

Danny's desire to "settle down" led him into academia to continue his studies at the Technion, and eventually, a move to MIT. While there, he developed the technology that transformed the "World Wide Wait" into the ubiquitous source of news and information we take for granted today. Raskin's tale is well written, starting with a general overview of his entire life and Akamai in the first chapter, answering the question of "why should I care?" on a biography about a little known person. She explains the technical aspects of a seemingly esoteric technology in clear terms, and then brings you not only into the development of Akamai, but into the life of Danny Lewin.

Highly recommended book for history buffs, but also appealing to those with an interest in Jewish history, the IDF, and the culture of aliyah.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful By Nancy Loderick TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 9, 2013
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
I'm on a biography kick these days. Reading about current people is especially interesting since I can identify with the times they live in. This book is about the life and times of Danny Lewin, one of the founders of Akamai. I thought Akamai was just another dot com company; I never realized the interesting story behind the company.

Why I enjoyed this book:

* Danny Lewin is a hero for our time. His story inspired me. He was smart, well, brilliant, a natural leader and yet he was a nice guy. What an interesting combination.

* The story of Akamai, the company Danny helped start. I live in the Boston area and have heard of Akamai; it's fun to learn more about a company you thought you knew.

* The team work Danny inspired. My lesson learned here is that you can do anything you set your mind to.

* The story drew me in. I was almost afraid to read the chapter about Flight 11 and the World Trade Center, since I knew the tragic outcome.

* The clearly written book. Molly Raskin, the author, did an excellent job of explaining some complex technical concepts, like how Akamai revolutionized the Internet.

I did think a few chapters dragged on with a bit too much description of an event and not enough description of Danny, the man. I completely understand the necessity of this for Danny's time in the Israeli army and in describing what happened on Flight 11, but I would have liked to read more about Danny and Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to be inspired and to learn more about how the Internet has changed because of one man.
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