Ben Horowitz begins his book by describing his family background. His grandparents were card-carrying communists, and Horowitz offers that his father “grew up indoctrinated in the philosophy of the left” (2). Horowitz was raised in Berkeley, California, a city that historically carries its own association with leftist ideology. Horowitz recounts his early memories of being painfully shy in school. Later, he met his best friend, an African American youngster, after a cousin dared him to take the boy’s wagon and insult him with a racial slur. Horowitz did neither and gained a friend instead of an enemy. He concludes that “experience also taught [him] not to judge things by their surfaces. Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything” (4).

Horowitz next recalls his years on the high school football team while simultaneously getting high grades. This caused him to straddle the two worlds of athletes and intellectuals and allowed him to develop multiple perspectives on different situations. He then skips forward to recount a date in 1986 with the woman who would eventually be his wife. Their first interaction got off to a bad start, and if Horowitz or his wife had been guided by their first impressions, they might never have entered into a relationship with one another at all.