Internet Born of Serendipity, Friendship and Failure

To historians of technology, the story of the internet—essentially, the story of how our cognition and culture began to merge with machines—is often focused on hackers and software engineers. Who wrote the code? Who did it first? And then who did it better?

To be sure, there's plenty of tech jargon in Brian McCullough's “How the Internet Happened.” You can find out who got the first iPhone call and who posted the first YouTube video. Yet Mr. McCullough takes a broader view, showing how a handful of powerful companies—all of them American, in his telling—came to dominate web technology. In his story, the internet didn't happen only because of wizardly coding and cheaper computers. It also happened because of serendipity, failure, friendships and blood feuds. And through it all a rainfall of cash (from venture capitalists, Wall Street and individual shareholders) eased a glide path to success.