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A writer recollects his journey from
wayward youth to entrepreneurial accomplishment. 

While growing up in California
during the 1950s and ’60s, debut author McGowan was relentlessly mischievous.
He was shot by an angry neighbor for trespassing, illegally established a
college radio station, and spent two weeks in jail for 14 vehicular violations
and failure to appear in court once summoned. The author ebulliently depicts
his self-destructive youth in his memoir. He fled to Canada to avoid the draft,
but the military ultimately caught up with him. While he was assured by a
recruiter that accepting a longer stint as a radio specialist would prevent his
deployment to Vietnam in 1969, that’s precisely where the Army intended to send
him. After attempting to fake a mental breakdown, McGowan managed to sidestep
Vietnam, landing in West Germany, where he worked as a DJ for the Armed Forces
Network. He narrowly avoided going to prison for drug smuggling. Along the
way, the author became infatuated with the European music scene and turned into
the kind of person he would entrepreneurially serve for the rest of his life:
an audiophile. He was eventually compelled to move back to the United States—he
got into trouble with his commanding officer for concealing his long hair under
a wig. He started his own company, PS Audio, which would eventually fail and then
return to life decades later. McGowan’s story is cinematically dramatic—it
always seems as if his destiny was either to make an indelible mark on the
world or rot in prison. He unflinchingly offers a strong self-critique. A
hubristic imprudence often torpedoed his ambitions: “What had made me believe I
had the chops to build the world’s first polyphonic synthesizer? I had no
education, no degree, nothing but chutzpah and a dream. I felt like a fraud.”
The author’s tale is one of indefatigable persistence combined with real
vision, stirringly conveyed in this remarkably readable memoir that also
recounts the birth of a new consumer, the audiophile. 

An engrossingly dramatic remembrance
coupled with a keen history of the audiophile industry.