This biography chronicles the fortunes of the world's biggest producer of computer software. The rapid expansion of Bill Gates's Microsoft corporation in the late 1980s and the early 1990s represents a phenomenon of importance not only in the world of business and computers, but to society in general. Gates has been much written about but little understood. Randall E. Stross analyzes both the opportunities and the dangers that the information superhighway Gates is embarked on will bring.