D'Souza soon gravitated toward conservative power, joining Reagan's administration in 1987 as a senior domestic policy analyst at the decidedly junior age of 26. After Reagan left office, D'Souza transformed himself into a bestselling author, publishing "Illiberal Education" in 1991, which contributed to the national outrage over political correctness in higher education.

After so stirring up America's cultural waters, D'Souza pushed the ultimate hot button with his 1995 book, "The End of Racism." This presumptuous title summed up his disturbing contention that racial disparities had more or less disappeared and it was time to move on to more pressing matters.

Courting such controversy was good for D'Souza's career, as the book sold well and he was regaled on the talk show circuit. However, following the police shooting of Amadou Diallo, the dragging death of James Byrd and growing concerns about racial profiling by law enforcement agencies nationwide, D'Souza has not written a sequel. Instead, in 1998 he published a glowing tribute to the leadership qualities of -- surprise, surprise -- Ronald Reagan.

Now, at age 39, D'Souza has turned his attention to the edifying subject of big money to find that the age of the Internet affords yet another opportunity to be a gadfly. And, like all of his previous assertions, D'Souza shapes his contrarianism out of simplistic, reductive observations.

D'Souza's capitalist interpretation of the Internet economy comes at the expense of several other factors related to the high-tech boom. For instance, he steers clear of controversial issues such as software encryption, Internet taxation, consumer privacy and H-1B visas for high-tech workers. He fails to address growing concerns about people who work harder but enjoy life less in the frantic pace of the high-tech world. Nor does he grapple much with repeated outpourings of public concern over globalization, as demonstrated by uprisings at the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle and other financial summits elsewhere in the past year.

D'Souza acknowledges the existence of the digital divide, but quickly dismisses the extent of the problem. After all, he argues, even poor families can afford to buy used computers these days, and besides, there's always that Internet terminal available at the library.

D'Souza says he chose to write "a political book, not a policy book," and he focused on personal wealth because "mass affluence is a truly new phenomenon that is at once exhilarating and unnerving. It makes available to the ordinary man avenues of personal fulfillment and debauchery that were previously only available to aristocrats." Of course, such a titillating snapshot fails to capture the sprawling canvas of Silicon Valley, and D'Souza's annoying fascination with money overshadows many of the valley's most important business breakthroughs.

For starters, he completely overlooks the corporate culture unleashed by Silicon Valley -- the flattening of hierarchies, the replacement of vertical decision making by horizontal collaborations, the widening of corporate partnerships and the goal of a rugged co-opetition rather than a bloodthirsty competition.

When asked about all this, D'Souza dismisses such partnerships as veiled expressions of self-interest. But his cynicism avoids clear evidence of essential changes in Silicon Valley's approach to doing business -- namely, the elimination of adversarial collective-bargaining agreements and the implementation of more effective worker incentives such as stock options, profit sharing and lavish benefits. When was the last time you heard about a strike at a high-tech firm?

Furthermore, Silicon Valley's rejection of the traditional "necktie and wingtip" business costume -- long required by the Eastern establishment -- has broader cultural significance, suggesting a marked shift in the age-old approach to "business as usual." When the dust of recent history settles, the valley will symbolize many things to many people, but it almost certainly will not be embraced as an affirmation of old-school capitalism, as D'Souza contends.

A simplistic trope employed throughout the book is the stark dichotomy between what D'Souza defines as the Parties of Yeah and Nah. The heroic Yeahs promote cool new technologies, often at the expense of reasonable caution, while the villainous Nahs are doomsayer Chicken Littles who scream that the sky is falling every time another part of the ozone layer is ripped apart. In D'Souza's bunkered warrior mentality, there are no in-betweens.

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