The Book of Burning: A Techno Love Story

“Swisher, the intrepid journalist and original chronicler of Silicon Valley... is unforgiving in this riveting look at the evolution of the digital world... Bold, frank and thought-provoking, just like its author, Burn Book is riveting.” Combining biography and history, this book is an essential chronicle of the most powerful figures in the world of technology. From the "Queen of 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 giants bragged that they would "move fast and break things," Kara Swisher moved faster and broke the news. Covering the digital explosion of the early 1990s, Kara Swisher established herself as a research, investigative, and truth-telling expert about this new world order. Her persistent scoops prompted one CEO to accuse her of espionage, and Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg to comment: “It's common in Silicon Valley for people to write in a memoir saying, 'I hope Kara never sees this.'” Swisher began her career at The Washington Post while in college, where she became among the few in journalism interested in covering the emerging Internet. She then went on to work at The Wall Street Journal, joining Walt Mossberg to launch the groundbreaking D: All About Digital conference, as well as leading technology news sites. Swisher interviewed all the influential figures in the world of technology over three decades, in the midst of a huge boom of innovations that changed the face of the world, and that had both a positive and negative impact. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few examples of whom Swisher has worried — figuratively and, in Zuckerberg's case, literally. Despite the damage she documents, Swisher remains optimistic that technology can help solve problems, not just create them. She calls on the technology sector to make better and more informed choices, even as a new set of powerful artificial intelligence tools prepare to change the world once again. At its core, this book is a love story of, for, and about technology, from someone who knows it better than anyone else.