Instant New York Times Bestseller 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 The
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.
