Mine's Bigger: Tom Perkins and the Making of the Greatest Sailing Machine Ever Built

Tom Perkins, the venture capitalist behind such companies as Google, Genentech, Amazon, and AOL, doesn't do things halfway. When he collected vintage cars, for instance, he had the world's largest collection of Bugatti automobiles. And when he decided to pursue a lifelong dream and build a sailing yacht, he went the whole nine yards: He decided it would be the world's largest yacht - big enough to fit Noah's Ark on its deck. He wanted it to sail at a record 26 knots, under unprecedented physical forces. And, he thought, having built this marine wonder, why not use it to try to smash the 155-year-old world sailing record from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn? Thus the Maltese Falcon - the largest private sailing vessel ever constructed - was born. More than just the story of the boat, "The Falcon" is a broader profile of the combination of ambition, recklessness, bravado, and achievements of a 21st century entrepreneur and his time.

Author Biography

David Kaplan is a senior editor at Newsweek, responsible for the magazine's Enterprise section. He is the author of The Silicon Boys (1999), a bestseller that was translated into six languages, and The Accidental President (2001). He appears frequently on both TV and radio.