Book Review: Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton by Markos Kounalakis (Beyond Words Publishing, Inc., 1993)

This book has been described as The Soul of a New Machine meets A Day in the Life. Unfortunately, it is neither, and it suffers in comparison with these two insightful works. Defying Gravity is a photojournalistic report of the events leading to the often-delayed introduction of the Newton in August 1993. Interestingly, the book arrived about one month after I finally received my Newton and about two months after the last event depicted in the book. Such rapid production of a book is in itself a reflection of modern information technology, though of course it could have been out even faster on the Internet. Basically, the photographer Doug Menuez followed the Newton development, marketing, and management teams through a period of about two years, and his photographs are presented intertwined with a text outlining the six-year history of the project. Unfortunately, the text and photos are poorly integrated, with the pictures and descriptions of the same events often occurring many pages apart without a cross-reference.