Wonderful piece. I had similar experiences, back to the 90ies. My www journey also began with an AOL CD, even if it was in Germany and they had weird pricing conditions. Luckily, it was a 30days trial, and I used this time to orient and to discover other ways to access web. With username “Gandalf” and unlimited curiosity.

I also asked myself, how can I find all the pages behind the proven paths of Yahoo and other cataloging search engines. Lycos, AllTheWeb and later Google were popping up — and the Odyssey begun…

Ah, memories… I just HAVE to get your book now! :D