The PC business is full of rags-to-riches stories. But perhaps none is as dramatic as the rise of Dell Computer. In Direct from Dell, founder and CEO Michael Dell tells how he started his company from a dorm room at the University of Texas with less than $1,000 and built it into an industry powerhouse with a market capitalization of well over $100 billion. What makes Dell Computer unique is not what it sells, but rather how it sells it. Dell was first in the PC industry to pioneer the direct-selling model, a method that competitors such as Compaq and Apple Computer are only now starting to embrace. By cutting out the intermediary and creating a direct link between manufacturer and customer, Dell was able to provide customers with computers that cost less and that were more apt to meet customer needs.

Direct from Dell is organized into two parts. The first recounts the history and the enormous growth of Dell Computer. The second part focuses on Dell's management approach, from developing customer focus to creating alliances with suppliers. The book manages to avoid most of the promotional and self-congratulatory air that seem to plague so many first-person CEO tomes. Anyone who has followed the PC industry or would like insight into Dell Computer's success should enjoy reading this book. Well written and easy to read. Recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

In 1983, Michael Dell, a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, drove away from his parents' Houston home in a BMW he'd bought selling subscriptions to his hometown newspaper.  In the backseat were three personal computers.  Today, he is the chairman and CEO of Dell Computer Corporation, a $30 billion company and the second largest manufacturer and marketer of computers in the world.

Founded on a deceptively simple premise-to deliver high-performance computer systems directly to the end user-Dell Computer is the envy of its competition.  It has consistently grown at two to three times the industry rate, its stock went up more than 90,000 percent in the last decade, and Dell is now selling more than $35 million worth of systems per day over  In Direct from Dell, you will learn