by Kara Swisher
Rating: 3.00 (1 ratings)
First published 2024
Kara Swisher built her career chasing down the truth about Silicon Valley's most powerful figures. Starting at The Washington Post while still in college, she became one of the few journalists covering the early internet. Her relentless reporting earned her access to every major tech leader over three decades, from Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. CEOs accused her of listening in heating ducts, and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg joked that executives hoped their memos would never reach Swisher's eyes. This book combines memoir with industry history, chronicling how tech founders promised to change the world but often broke it instead. Swisher documents the unprecedented wealth creation of the digital boom while examining both the innovations that helped society and the damage these companies caused. Despite cataloging tech's failures, she maintains hope for the industry's potential to solve problems rather than create them.
Genres: business, non-fiction, biography-memoir, technology, 21st-century, journalism
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, memoir
Setting: Silicon Valley, Washington Post
Period: Early Internet, Three Decades
305 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster