Chapter 3. Three Booms and How They Ended

The young woman had a forced smile on her face and she looked harried. She was trying to deal with three people at once, and about a dozen people crowded around her. She was taking names and adding them to a handwritten list that covered both sides of a sheet of paper.

It was a Friday evening in 1998 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the young woman was the hostess at an expensive restaurant. She wore a stylish evening dress and had an air of professional authority. She had developed a firm manner to use with customers who became overbearing. The restaurant was not particularly in fashion, but it was very good and had a good location near Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She told people without reservations ...

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