A Review Of David Beers' 'Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America's Fall from Grace.' By Kent Anderson IF ONE GREW up, as I did, in California's Santa Clara Valley in the 1950s and 1960s (years before it became known as Silicon Valley) and believed it to be the most perfect place on the planet, it is disconcerting to read David Beers' account of life in the same area. In his book, Blue Sky Dream: America's Fall from Grace, Beers paints a darker portrait of the old neighborhood. His Silicon Valley, which may have appeared initially as a suburban paradise to millions of California emigrants, turned, ultimately, into a land of dwindling expectations and economic fear; a scenario for America's future. Blue Sky Dream is not so much an autobiography as it is a memoir of the author's family, with the emphasis on his father and mother. David Beers grew up in the Valley in the 1960s and 1970s as part of a seemingly average middle-class existence. The two dominant institutions of the book reflect the strong parental focus: the Lockheed Corp., where his father worked, and the Catholic Church, in which his mother devoutly attempted to raise the children. Beers successfully uses the language of anthropology in his narrative. His family was part of the "Blue Sky tribe" of aerospace families who settled in the Valley. The placement of Kodak "pictographs" in the hallway of his home was a "totem" of great familial significance. The "Blue Sky tribe" believed their unquestioning commitment to such corporate megaliths as Lockheed would be rewarded with continual government funding for unending defense projects which, in turn, would lead to never-ending prosperity and upward mobility. This belief became the core of the tribal myth, according to the author. As Beers describes, however, his father, Hal, became a frustrated worker and father. He was increasingly forbidden to talk about his work to anyone, including his own family. This was due to Hal's involvement in the "Black World" projects of guided missile technology and spy satellites. As the years passed, the father's angst grew and his children became distanced from him. Beers relates the process in the following passage: ...How does a young boy imagine himself following in his father's footsteps if those footsteps lead into blackness? How can a secret systems engineer pass on to his son the tenets of his profession? With no picture in mind of what my father did at Lockheed, I turned my gaze toward what he did at home. But even at home, my father managed to make his projects secret ones, hidden behind his wall of impatience. Ultimately, the outcome of the "Blue Sky" myth was disillusion and despair. The Cold War receded, government largesse dried up and more than 100,000 aerospace workers, who had spent their whole careers preparing a nation for high-tech war, were pushed out as a result of "rightsizing," an even more insidious euphemism than "downsizing." Blue Sky Dream contains many exceptionally lucid and insightful passages, such as the account of the childhood of Steve Wozniak, inventor of the Apple computer. Other parts of the book, though, seem disjointed. Part of the problem rests with the author's deliberate decision to proceed with his narrative in a non-linear and non-chronological fashion. For example, he will begin to tell a family episode, then break in with what he feels are pertinent elements--such as e-mail from unemployed Silicon Valley workers--and then return to where he left off in his initial narrative. Structurally, it's like trying to read an account of Pulp Fiction as the movie actually progresses on screen. Most reviewers of this work have dwelled on Beers' relationship with his father, but his descriptions of his mother, Terry, and her "sphere" are uniformly excellent. In terms of interesting prose, the two chapters on mom ("Our Lady of Aerospace" and "Our Lady of Irony") are absolute gems. A small sample of the author at his best is this brief description of his loss of faith: "I did not so much lose my Catholicism as casually shrug it off, leaving it there in the pews like a forgotten sweater on a warm California Sunday." Nothing really dramatic happens in this book. Unlike many others, the author's immediate "tribe" did not suffer materially. His father was nudged out of Lockheed with a generous golden parachute, and neither David Beers nor his siblings opted for the corporate life. Despite this and some slight stylistic flaws, Blue Sky Dream is worthwhile reading for anyone concerned about America's economic future and its technological workforce. The end feeling one has is that of despair. As the author's mother would say: God might endorse progress, but never would he guarantee it. Kent Anderson is the author of Television Fraud: The History and Implications of the Quiz Show Scandals (Greenwood Press). He was a consultant for the Robert Redford movie Quiz Show.

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