by Theo Baker
Rating: 4.00 (1 ratings)
First published 2026
Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University as a seventeen-year-old tech enthusiast expecting academic paradise. Instead, he found a culture where corner-cutting thrived and excessive privilege flowed to students marked as future startup founders. Secret societies recruited these chosen few. Billionaires made social calls. The university operated more like a business than a school, with a budget exceeding that of Harvard, Yale, and 116 countries. When Baker joined the student newspaper and investigated university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, he uncovered unreported allegations of research misconduct spanning two decades. Anonymous letters arrived. High-powered lawyers attacked his reporting. Stanford launched an investigation into its own leader. Within a year, Tessier-Lavigne resigned. This book chronicles Baker's journey from reluctant teenage reporter to George Polk Award winner while exposing Silicon Valley's elite training ground and the students learning to join the ruling class.
Genres: business, american, contemporary, non-fiction, investigative-journalism, academia
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, whistleblower
Setting: Stanford University
Period: 21st-century
336 pages · Hardcover · Penguin Press