Stephen Witt’s entertaining study of the rise of chip company Nvidia portrays its leader, Jensen Huang, as a remarkable entrepreneur – sometimes energised by angerThis is the latest confirmation that the “great man” theory of history continues to thrive in Silicon Valley. As such, it joins a genre that includes Walter Isaacson’s twin tomes on Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, Brad Stone’s book on Jeff Bezos, Michael Becraft’s on Bill Gates, Max Chafkin’s on Peter Thiel and Michael Lewis’s on Sam Bankman-Fried. Notable characteristics of the genre include a tendency towards founder worship, discreet hagiography and a Whiggish interpretation of the life under examination.The great man under Witt’s microscope is the co-founder and chief executive of Nvidia, a chip design company that went from being a small but plucky purveyor of graphics processing units (GPUs) for computer gaming to its current position as the third most valuable company in the world.The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip by Stephen Witt is published by Bodley Head (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at