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Burn Book
From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.
“Swisher, the bad-ass journalist and OG chronicler of Silicon Valley…takes no prisoners in this highly readable look at the evolution of the digital world…Bawdy, brash, and compulsively thought-provoking, just like its author, Burn Book sizzles” (Booklist, starred review).
Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. From “the queen of all media” (Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal), this is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.
When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,” Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of “listening in the heating ducts” and prompted Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg to once observe: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’”
While still in college, Swisher got her start at The Washington Post, where she became one of the few people in journalism interested in covering the nascent Internet. She went on to work for The Wall Street Journal, joining with Walt Mossberg to start the groundbreaking D: All Things Digital conference, as well as pioneering tech news sites.
Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over three decades, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom Swisher made sweat—figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally.
Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone.
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Reviews
Instead of doomscrolling, I’ve deleted all social media with the exception of Patreon where I try to keep up with (more thoughtful and intelligent) people than myself. I subscribe to the NYT, but also to the WSJ (for another perspective) and heard of Kara Swisher along the way. Burn Book is a great read; It could have been dry, or an overly dramatic tell-all, but I what impressed me the most was her quick-witted writing style and utter nonchalance with the self appointed mansplainers of the tech world. Thanks for the insight into this world and I approach the future with some hope but mostly trepidation. I think I’ll go work in the garden, now.
By Carole (as in Lombard)
Definitely written in Kara’s style! (Duh…) Loved hearing her voice in my head as it went along. If you’re a fan of hers, I think you’ll love it. Thanks Kara!
By Dw11811
I got halfway through this book and had to delete it. This book is the author’s opportunity to have payback on what she regularly refers to as the Bro Hood of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. While I recognize these two industries have been dominated by men and plagued with inequality, it clearly takes an extreme effort for the author to come up with any type of compliment for any male industry executive. All the while, the author showers any female executive with praise and reverence. Her tone is constantly condescending, and after a while simply becomes boring and predictable. This is a woman who clearly was a leader and visionary in her own field, but hearing about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the Google founders, the YouTube founders, etc. with nothing but distain and an occasional underhanded compliment was distasteful to me. This could’ve been such a great book to educate the unknowing public of the evolution of the technology world, but instead, it’s full of spite and innuendos. This being said, I encourage you to read this book if this does not bother you. It’s extremely insightful and oftentimes witty - I just reached my tipping point.
By Nigel St Hubbins
Interesting behind the curtain look at how the sausage is made in Silicon Valley .
By Mr Subro
I can only imagine the things Kara has heard that didn’t make it into this book! Asking all the right questions, pointed at those with oversized, extremely covert influence - shedding light on so much. Looking forward to a follow up!
By BigAppleGreg