The quickest possible summary of the book might be that Negroponte convinced a bunch of people to buy into his vision for the XO laptop, and he turned out to be wrong. The point of the book isn’t the punchline, but is Morgan’s storytelling and empathy that she has for all the participants in the narrative. She understands the big and important vision that Negroponte was promoting and why he was promoting it. She develops the construct of "charisma" to explain why people bought in to this vision. Most of all, she has empathy for the teachers and children who tried to use the XO laptop — mostly unsuccessfully.