Project Description

Restart Me Up

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the greatest technological achievement known to mankind: Windows 95. (With all due respect, the telephone and nuclear fission can suck it.) This is the untold, unbelievable, largely untrue story of the creation of Windows 95.

Go behind the system and meet those who made it all possible: the beleaguered programmers who became addicted to snorting Pixy Stix, the marketers who employed mass hypnosis tactics to trick the press, the violent battle to squash a literal giant bug in the code, the focus group idiots who only cared about getting pizza for lunch, and “mighty god” Bill Gates, who engaged in a money suitcase stand-off with Mick Jagger over the rights to “Start Me Up.” It’s the story of how a tiny operating system patch became a multinational, mundane media phenomenon.

“As someone who still runs Windows 95, Lesley Tsina’s book was a valuable and much needed collection of information to finally get me to stop.”

-Wyatt Cenac, The Daily Show

“Lesley is one of the weirdest people I’ve ever met. Thank god she found a way to put it into book form.”

-Matt Besser, Upright Citizens Brigade

About the Author: Lesley Tsina is a writer and actor who has appeared on Community, Blackish, HBO’s Funny or Die Presents and NPR’s Marketplace.

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