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Burn Book: A Tech Love Story
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.
Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. 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.
Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. 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.
305 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2024
2318 people are currently reading
14517 people want to read
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April 25, 2024
18th book for 2024.
Audiobook—Author Reading
When I was a psychology undergraduate at university in Australia in the early 1990s I was given access to the university VAX computers as part of our compulsory statistics course. This was still a time when typing up an essay, with errors corrected in tippex was seen as fancy, most students still handwrote course assignments, and most professors still hadn't learnt of email, and HTML was a few years away.
What my professor didn't know was that having a VAX account came along with Internet access and when I realized this I went wild. Suddenly I had access to email and Usenet discussion groups. On a backgammon group I suggested we stop talking about games and actually play them, and so ended up running the first International BG tournament through my statistics account—non-trivial as email was the sole form of communication for players (how do you show a board? how do you roll dice in a way that players see as fair?). My professor commended me for being so hard working as my time online was audited.
It's clear from her account that Swisher got the Internet as I did, and took the jump, leaving a golden path to politics reporter at the Washington Post to the (then) very niche job of tech reporter on the West Coast. She was there at the beginning and broke many key stories on Silicon Valley as it developed, and in the process becoming a Silicon Valley icon herself.
So this book should have been a easy win for me. However, it turned out to be a vapid nothingburger. The book is made up of chapters where Swisher mostly bashes Internet founders as narcissistic white man children—something I can get behind—but her analysis is so shallow it basically exists at the level of name calling. The Google Founders are labelled the weird twins and criticised in a mild way for ripping off intellectual property. Mark Zuckerberg is apparently still a teenage arsehole that sweats a lot when he's nervous. Bezos is super ambitious and given a star for getting internet delivery sorted out—but is also an arsehole. Musk was apparently a great guy until he bought Twitter and ruined it for Swisher (what about all the shitty things he did before then with Tesla??). Steve Jobs was an arsehole, but a visionary and so he gets a pass. Nothing she says is interesting or deep or new here.
The other chapters are a sort of Wikipedia style summary of her life. She got a job here, she dated so and so, married someone else, had a child, started this business or that business. None of it is anywhere deep or personal enough to be of much interest. Most of this seems to be either to puff-up her self worth or aid in her slagging off of this or that boss from decades past. She also has this annoying habit of constantly talking about how "tough" she is, how "mean but fair" she is. Isn't that what any decent journalist is?
The only thing I'll take from the book is Sergey Brin's baby shower in 2008, where the rich and famous attendees were forced to choose between wearing nappies or onesies, and could drink expensive vodka dripping from an ice statue's nipple.
Normally I don't give one-stars, as I usually abandon these sorts of books before the end, but since I finished this one I'll rate it.
1-star.
Audiobook—Author Reading
When I was a psychology undergraduate at university in Australia in the early 1990s I was given access to the university VAX computers as part of our compulsory statistics course. This was still a time when typing up an essay, with errors corrected in tippex was seen as fancy, most students still handwrote course assignments, and most professors still hadn't learnt of email, and HTML was a few years away.
What my professor didn't know was that having a VAX account came along with Internet access and when I realized this I went wild. Suddenly I had access to email and Usenet discussion groups. On a backgammon group I suggested we stop talking about games and actually play them, and so ended up running the first International BG tournament through my statistics account—non-trivial as email was the sole form of communication for players (how do you show a board? how do you roll dice in a way that players see as fair?). My professor commended me for being so hard working as my time online was audited.
It's clear from her account that Swisher got the Internet as I did, and took the jump, leaving a golden path to politics reporter at the Washington Post to the (then) very niche job of tech reporter on the West Coast. She was there at the beginning and broke many key stories on Silicon Valley as it developed, and in the process becoming a Silicon Valley icon herself.
So this book should have been a easy win for me. However, it turned out to be a vapid nothingburger. The book is made up of chapters where Swisher mostly bashes Internet founders as narcissistic white man children—something I can get behind—but her analysis is so shallow it basically exists at the level of name calling. The Google Founders are labelled the weird twins and criticised in a mild way for ripping off intellectual property. Mark Zuckerberg is apparently still a teenage arsehole that sweats a lot when he's nervous. Bezos is super ambitious and given a star for getting internet delivery sorted out—but is also an arsehole. Musk was apparently a great guy until he bought Twitter and ruined it for Swisher (what about all the shitty things he did before then with Tesla??). Steve Jobs was an arsehole, but a visionary and so he gets a pass. Nothing she says is interesting or deep or new here.
The other chapters are a sort of Wikipedia style summary of her life. She got a job here, she dated so and so, married someone else, had a child, started this business or that business. None of it is anywhere deep or personal enough to be of much interest. Most of this seems to be either to puff-up her self worth or aid in her slagging off of this or that boss from decades past. She also has this annoying habit of constantly talking about how "tough" she is, how "mean but fair" she is. Isn't that what any decent journalist is?
The only thing I'll take from the book is Sergey Brin's baby shower in 2008, where the rich and famous attendees were forced to choose between wearing nappies or onesies, and could drink expensive vodka dripping from an ice statue's nipple.
Normally I don't give one-stars, as I usually abandon these sorts of books before the end, but since I finished this one I'll rate it.
1-star.
February 29, 2024
A quick and fun read. That is, if you enjoy witty, scathing critiques of white men in hoodies.
February 29, 2024
I really wanted to like this. But there wasn't a lot of new info here, especially if you've followed Kara's work for a while. Most times I felt like it was collation of multiple opinion blog posts rather than a cohesive story.
July 1, 2024
After the first few chapters I wanted to give this one 5 stars. Author is a smart, sharp writer and fellow Hoya (Georgetown grad) placed in the front row of the nascent internet world. Her prickly personality seems ideal for skewering both the old media overlords and the white bros of new tech money.
But about half way through I grew tired of her superior and sanctimonious tone. She seems to loathe every technology innovator except for Steve Jobs for whom she has an enduring crush on in spite of his many documented deficiencies about which she makes no mention.
In today’s world, and as always, there are people who make things happen and then those like this author who watch the genius unfold and then launch criticisms from the sidelines like an angry sports fan who claims to know the game better than the athletes. Ugh.
I get that she views herself as the “hey these emperors have no clothes” type, as most journalists do. But I’m much more a fan of those who are at least trying to make a better world, and not so much of the bystanders who smugly complain, ironically, via the technology hardware and social media platforms created by the targets of their vitriol.
IMHO she should have taken all the upstart investment opportunities she so proudly likes to remind us she repeatedly resisted, but she prefers to reside on the hill of self-believing moral and intellectual superiority. I guess I’m in no position to judge, though, since I’ve never been a journalist covering tech people and yet I’m now complaining about one via my keyboard.
But about half way through I grew tired of her superior and sanctimonious tone. She seems to loathe every technology innovator except for Steve Jobs for whom she has an enduring crush on in spite of his many documented deficiencies about which she makes no mention.
In today’s world, and as always, there are people who make things happen and then those like this author who watch the genius unfold and then launch criticisms from the sidelines like an angry sports fan who claims to know the game better than the athletes. Ugh.
I get that she views herself as the “hey these emperors have no clothes” type, as most journalists do. But I’m much more a fan of those who are at least trying to make a better world, and not so much of the bystanders who smugly complain, ironically, via the technology hardware and social media platforms created by the targets of their vitriol.
IMHO she should have taken all the upstart investment opportunities she so proudly likes to remind us she repeatedly resisted, but she prefers to reside on the hill of self-believing moral and intellectual superiority. I guess I’m in no position to judge, though, since I’ve never been a journalist covering tech people and yet I’m now complaining about one via my keyboard.
March 6, 2024
I really enjoy Kara Swisher’s podcasts. This book is kind of a general history of modern tech with some personal anecdotes. The tone of the book feels strangely arrogant, like she knows better than all of these brilliant tech revolutionaries. Maybe should have been called Brag Book? ;)
May 29, 2025
(1.7) So I had no idea who Kara swisher is. This book came across the transom probably carried on some best of the new year books, but it was about tech history so I figured sure, seems intriguing…
Burn Book tells some bare bones origin story of the girl who would become a reporter and then an early insider on the emerging tech colossus in Silicon Valley…
And her rather acerbic takes on that industry are a obviously well informed but with like so many people today she just can’t stop herself from disgorging her left wing beliefs…
Author’s note here —of the last dozen books I’ve read Shakespeare in a divided country, Knife, Barbara Streisand and now Burn Book..these people can’t stop writing about Donald Trump; Orange Shrek really has eaten their brains..
““If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the Internet, rejects fake news, and denounces hate against our diverse employees,
then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower. Short of that, they are being used to legitimize a fascist.”
“But just imagine if they’d had those supercharged tools. Well, Trump did, and he won the election, thanks in large part to social media.”
No, Trump didn’t win an election bc of social media…
“My minor in college was in Holocaust studies. I studied propaganda, and I could see Trump was an expert at it. I knew exactly where this was headed.”
More hysterical nonsense…These folks afflicted with auto-erotic Trump dysphoria can’t decide if he’s a Buffoon or an evil mastermind.
“only six months after a mob attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Social media, particularly Facebook, played a role in the ability of then President Donald Trump and his minions to amplify hate and lies and spin them into violence”
Yes, Trump was a sore loser and pursued many legal remedies that were undergirded with weak statutory analysis…but his lawsuits were relevant enough that Congress rewrote part of the electoral count act to clarify the law.
““Trump Is Too Dangerous for Twitter.” I called on the platform to ban him, predicting what could happen if it did not”
..of course we now know from the Twitterfiles that the govt was pressuring all the social media platforms using all its powers through regular meeting with the FBI to control what people could read and discuss. The govt was found guilty of censorship in its case in Murthy v Missouri as a spinoff of its Kara sanctioned machinations…
More Trump nonsense, “When I heard a Silicon Valley billionaire had paid E. Jean Carroll’s legal bills in her victorious sexual assault case against former President Donald Trump, I knew it had to be Hoffman. “Supporting women fighting for progress and justice in philanthropy, politics, and business has been a longstanding priority of mine, as is supporting America against the threat of Trump”
The great irony is 15 years after she alleged Trump sexually assaulted her Carroll went on FB to proclaim, “what’s your favorite show on Sundays. I love the Apprentice”
Let me be clear, no woman who was raped 15 years later announces to the world her rapist’s tv show was her favorite..
Another beef with Kara is she’s always pushing this follow your dream mentality,
“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” Steve Jobs, who Kara has so much praise for…
Facts: Jobs was a truly awful person. his relationships with women were treacherous, he denied his own child’s existence and was fine with her living on welfare…he once railed at his daughter’s friend for ordering meat at a restaurant…the girl was ten..
Jobs was a singularly lucky person who happened to live down the block from computer geek named Wozniak…he had no tech knowledge, he couldn’t even solder. His most insightful moments were when he visited an Oregon commune and picked up pointers on controlling folks from some hippy guru.
After discovering he had the utra rare type of pancreatic cancer that could be cured by surgery, Jobs demurred and spent 9months eating carrots and engaging in holistic quackery. This pause doomed him.
And her next target…
“No, Zuckerberg wasn’t an asshole. He was worse. He was one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology who didn’t even know it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the worst of them.
made a huge external mess. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter spread hate speech.”
So, here’s another theme of Kara’s: hate speech, dis and misinformation are all just terrible. As a reporter, I find her understanding of the first amendment shocking but predictable in today’s society…also, predictably, Kara never actually gives any remedies for this hate speech…btw…there is no thing as hate speech…it’s just speech you don’t like and it’s protected. Kara labors under the misinformed notion that she gets to believe in a democratic republic that asks for its citizens to be active and engaged and yet feels the overwhelming need to curate the information for the poor deluded masses.
“I’d been to this sexist rodeo before when I worked for John McLaughlin and saw how his casual sexual harassment ruined the lives of his targets.”
McLaughlin was a curmudgeonly, rude, and sexist old man who made his staff do menial tasks…Kara fails to show who’s lives he “ruined”
Her most ludicrous assertion folllows—
“I still felt like sexism was never going away—I could see it everywhere, sometimes comically. Standing outside a holiday party for one of Uber’s earliest and most loyal investors at his fabulous mansion, I was dumbfounded to see an actual reindeer in the driveway greeting guests on the way in. The investor had rented the huge creature as a prop, a decoration, and, I suppose, as an example of his growing wealth, much as he had put his pricey cars on display at previous events. The reindeer was visibly wilting and looked decidedly uncomfortable in the far too warm climate, so I asked the minder if the animal was going to be okay. “It’s not an ideal situation, but she’ll be fine,” the minder responded. Of course, it was a female reindeer. Unable to do anything but stare, all I could think was that she was anything but fine.”
Next, I figured she would launch into a diatribe over how sexist Santa was for only employing male reindeer.
“truly believe that you should push yourself in areas where you are passionate, and if you don’t feel passion toward something, get out of it.” That philosophy doesn’t work for all the folks who aren’t even average…and that’s half the population.
.
And now comes her oh so fashionable hatred of Elon Musk, “Steve Jobs would have abhorred Musk.”
Speaking for the dead shouldn’t be done by a reporter who has only a passing knowledge of the men in question.
Additionally, Musk has a degree in Econ and physics…Jobs quit college almost immediately.
Musk was an engineer who was fixing code on Tesla’s factory floor…Jobs couldn’t solder.
Musk was such an innovative physicist he could look at his son’s Hot Wheel and ask why they couldn’t mold the entire body of a Tesla this way…
Musk has nearly half a dozen successful companies…Jobs had a good aesthetic sense, got fired from Apple, failed with Next, invested in Pixar, and then saved Apple…the accomplishment of the former shine far brighter.
“I’ve since abandoned any hope of redemption, as idiocy has piled on top of idiocy, none of which has made Twitter a better business or a better product.”
Really, Kara? Musk cut 75% of the workforce and Twitter works fine.
Andrew Ross Sorkin—whom he inexplicably referred to as “Jonathan”—to “go fuck yourself.”
First off, petty silliness, and Musk’s point was he was not going to be blackmailed by money. Kara is either obtuse here or benighted.
Supposedly Musk has tweeted, “transphobic, homophobic, conspiracy drenched, and tweeter of unfunny memes”
And yet Kara supplies no examples.
“His solution was to start a strange company called Neuralink to create a chip implant to improve the brain’s bandwidth and be upgradable. It’s an interesting and unproven gambit and also controversial for many reasons”
A quadriplegic is now using neuralink to vastly increase his life’s happiness…but Kara isn’t satisfied
“Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter’s trust and safety department, was subject to an inaccurate accusation by Musk that forced him to leave his home after death threats, as well as a series of nothing-burger allegations about content moderation.”
As twitterfiles revealed, Roth was far out of his depth…the guy had a PhD in Grindr and was being big footed by govt Intel to suppress hunters laptop.
Overall, this putative hard hitting, take no quarter, speak truth to the geeky tech bros is mired in her leftist delusions that have left her anchored to a broken mindset.
Burn Book tells some bare bones origin story of the girl who would become a reporter and then an early insider on the emerging tech colossus in Silicon Valley…
And her rather acerbic takes on that industry are a obviously well informed but with like so many people today she just can’t stop herself from disgorging her left wing beliefs…
Author’s note here —of the last dozen books I’ve read Shakespeare in a divided country, Knife, Barbara Streisand and now Burn Book..these people can’t stop writing about Donald Trump; Orange Shrek really has eaten their brains..
““If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the Internet, rejects fake news, and denounces hate against our diverse employees,
then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower. Short of that, they are being used to legitimize a fascist.”
“But just imagine if they’d had those supercharged tools. Well, Trump did, and he won the election, thanks in large part to social media.”
No, Trump didn’t win an election bc of social media…
“My minor in college was in Holocaust studies. I studied propaganda, and I could see Trump was an expert at it. I knew exactly where this was headed.”
More hysterical nonsense…These folks afflicted with auto-erotic Trump dysphoria can’t decide if he’s a Buffoon or an evil mastermind.
“only six months after a mob attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Social media, particularly Facebook, played a role in the ability of then President Donald Trump and his minions to amplify hate and lies and spin them into violence”
Yes, Trump was a sore loser and pursued many legal remedies that were undergirded with weak statutory analysis…but his lawsuits were relevant enough that Congress rewrote part of the electoral count act to clarify the law.
““Trump Is Too Dangerous for Twitter.” I called on the platform to ban him, predicting what could happen if it did not”
..of course we now know from the Twitterfiles that the govt was pressuring all the social media platforms using all its powers through regular meeting with the FBI to control what people could read and discuss. The govt was found guilty of censorship in its case in Murthy v Missouri as a spinoff of its Kara sanctioned machinations…
More Trump nonsense, “When I heard a Silicon Valley billionaire had paid E. Jean Carroll’s legal bills in her victorious sexual assault case against former President Donald Trump, I knew it had to be Hoffman. “Supporting women fighting for progress and justice in philanthropy, politics, and business has been a longstanding priority of mine, as is supporting America against the threat of Trump”
The great irony is 15 years after she alleged Trump sexually assaulted her Carroll went on FB to proclaim, “what’s your favorite show on Sundays. I love the Apprentice”
Let me be clear, no woman who was raped 15 years later announces to the world her rapist’s tv show was her favorite..
Another beef with Kara is she’s always pushing this follow your dream mentality,
“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” Steve Jobs, who Kara has so much praise for…
Facts: Jobs was a truly awful person. his relationships with women were treacherous, he denied his own child’s existence and was fine with her living on welfare…he once railed at his daughter’s friend for ordering meat at a restaurant…the girl was ten..
Jobs was a singularly lucky person who happened to live down the block from computer geek named Wozniak…he had no tech knowledge, he couldn’t even solder. His most insightful moments were when he visited an Oregon commune and picked up pointers on controlling folks from some hippy guru.
After discovering he had the utra rare type of pancreatic cancer that could be cured by surgery, Jobs demurred and spent 9months eating carrots and engaging in holistic quackery. This pause doomed him.
And her next target…
“No, Zuckerberg wasn’t an asshole. He was worse. He was one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology who didn’t even know it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the worst of them.
made a huge external mess. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter spread hate speech.”
So, here’s another theme of Kara’s: hate speech, dis and misinformation are all just terrible. As a reporter, I find her understanding of the first amendment shocking but predictable in today’s society…also, predictably, Kara never actually gives any remedies for this hate speech…btw…there is no thing as hate speech…it’s just speech you don’t like and it’s protected. Kara labors under the misinformed notion that she gets to believe in a democratic republic that asks for its citizens to be active and engaged and yet feels the overwhelming need to curate the information for the poor deluded masses.
“I’d been to this sexist rodeo before when I worked for John McLaughlin and saw how his casual sexual harassment ruined the lives of his targets.”
McLaughlin was a curmudgeonly, rude, and sexist old man who made his staff do menial tasks…Kara fails to show who’s lives he “ruined”
Her most ludicrous assertion folllows—
“I still felt like sexism was never going away—I could see it everywhere, sometimes comically. Standing outside a holiday party for one of Uber’s earliest and most loyal investors at his fabulous mansion, I was dumbfounded to see an actual reindeer in the driveway greeting guests on the way in. The investor had rented the huge creature as a prop, a decoration, and, I suppose, as an example of his growing wealth, much as he had put his pricey cars on display at previous events. The reindeer was visibly wilting and looked decidedly uncomfortable in the far too warm climate, so I asked the minder if the animal was going to be okay. “It’s not an ideal situation, but she’ll be fine,” the minder responded. Of course, it was a female reindeer. Unable to do anything but stare, all I could think was that she was anything but fine.”
Next, I figured she would launch into a diatribe over how sexist Santa was for only employing male reindeer.
“truly believe that you should push yourself in areas where you are passionate, and if you don’t feel passion toward something, get out of it.” That philosophy doesn’t work for all the folks who aren’t even average…and that’s half the population.
.
And now comes her oh so fashionable hatred of Elon Musk, “Steve Jobs would have abhorred Musk.”
Speaking for the dead shouldn’t be done by a reporter who has only a passing knowledge of the men in question.
Additionally, Musk has a degree in Econ and physics…Jobs quit college almost immediately.
Musk was an engineer who was fixing code on Tesla’s factory floor…Jobs couldn’t solder.
Musk was such an innovative physicist he could look at his son’s Hot Wheel and ask why they couldn’t mold the entire body of a Tesla this way…
Musk has nearly half a dozen successful companies…Jobs had a good aesthetic sense, got fired from Apple, failed with Next, invested in Pixar, and then saved Apple…the accomplishment of the former shine far brighter.
“I’ve since abandoned any hope of redemption, as idiocy has piled on top of idiocy, none of which has made Twitter a better business or a better product.”
Really, Kara? Musk cut 75% of the workforce and Twitter works fine.
Andrew Ross Sorkin—whom he inexplicably referred to as “Jonathan”—to “go fuck yourself.”
First off, petty silliness, and Musk’s point was he was not going to be blackmailed by money. Kara is either obtuse here or benighted.
Supposedly Musk has tweeted, “transphobic, homophobic, conspiracy drenched, and tweeter of unfunny memes”
And yet Kara supplies no examples.
“His solution was to start a strange company called Neuralink to create a chip implant to improve the brain’s bandwidth and be upgradable. It’s an interesting and unproven gambit and also controversial for many reasons”
A quadriplegic is now using neuralink to vastly increase his life’s happiness…but Kara isn’t satisfied
“Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter’s trust and safety department, was subject to an inaccurate accusation by Musk that forced him to leave his home after death threats, as well as a series of nothing-burger allegations about content moderation.”
As twitterfiles revealed, Roth was far out of his depth…the guy had a PhD in Grindr and was being big footed by govt Intel to suppress hunters laptop.
Overall, this putative hard hitting, take no quarter, speak truth to the geeky tech bros is mired in her leftist delusions that have left her anchored to a broken mindset.
March 4, 2024
The greatest technology reporter of the age adds to her legacy with a thoughtful, funny, and essential review of her years dissecting Silicon Valley lunacy for us. For fans of her work (including me, for sure), we get a greatest hits book with her additional acerbic content as she dresses down the powerful and calls out the insanity that reigns supreme among the Tech Bros. Somehow, she's tougher than any of them. More importantly, she enables the rest of us to better understand where tech is going and what it means because it affects our whole lives now more than ever before.
March 17, 2024
The author mocks famous tech founders calling them children while she herself behave childishly, just in another way.
The book is so sarcastic and pretends to be above things so much, that it drowns in a "he's such an asshole" swamp with them. It spends so much time on bullshiting that it forgets what it wants to be about and doesn't have time to go deeper.
It wanted to be a "fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead." But it is neither accounting nor fair.
It contains just a few stories that tell you, all around, how Kara is important because she texts with these "moguls". She doesn't forget to say "I knew it." or "I told him" everytime someone did something wrong.
There's nothing new in the book you wouldn't already know about famous tech founders. It doesn't bring different perspective on these powerfull and dangerous men either. It's just childish rant.
The book is so sarcastic and pretends to be above things so much, that it drowns in a "he's such an asshole" swamp with them. It spends so much time on bullshiting that it forgets what it wants to be about and doesn't have time to go deeper.
It wanted to be a "fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead." But it is neither accounting nor fair.
It contains just a few stories that tell you, all around, how Kara is important because she texts with these "moguls". She doesn't forget to say "I knew it." or "I told him" everytime someone did something wrong.
There's nothing new in the book you wouldn't already know about famous tech founders. It doesn't bring different perspective on these powerfull and dangerous men either. It's just childish rant.
April 4, 2024
Easiest five stars I've given. Many readers seem to think that the point of this razor-sharp, rich, hilarious tome is that it will offer new insight into the motivations of Silicon Valley tech CEOs, but to me, it's not really about the techies. It's about getting to see the world, for 300+ glorious pages, through the eyes of Swisher. Her insight always hits home and gives me real, substantive hope for the future.
As I navigate another "night sweats"-inducing term of Operation Electrical Engineering Degree—a pursuit that often fills me with despair and rage as I find myself, class after class, being one of the astonishingly few wamen in room—I have taken to carrying this book in my backpack as a talisman to ward off the darkness. It works. I was on a Zoom call yesterday and had this book propped up to serve as my "Support Swisher." As I prepared to unmute myself to speak (gross!) I looked into those burning aviators and felt the fear dissipate.
(Read this book. Listen to her podcasts.)
As I navigate another "night sweats"-inducing term of Operation Electrical Engineering Degree—a pursuit that often fills me with despair and rage as I find myself, class after class, being one of the astonishingly few wamen in room—I have taken to carrying this book in my backpack as a talisman to ward off the darkness. It works. I was on a Zoom call yesterday and had this book propped up to serve as my "Support Swisher." As I prepared to unmute myself to speak (gross!) I looked into those burning aviators and felt the fear dissipate.
(Read this book. Listen to her podcasts.)
March 1, 2025
Kara Swisher has been a journalist covering Big Tech for the past 30 years. She is also an entrepreneur in reporting on all things digital through digital and traditional media. She tells the story of her career and in doing so, she provides first-hand insights into the development of Big Tech: the personalities, the companies, the major acquisitions and the failures. With the stories she provides her analysis and her opinions as to what it all means. Having spent my career in technology, I knew many of the stories but still enjoyed the refresh as well as the many details of which I was not aware.
The world these entrepreneurs live in is nearly impossible to imagine, but then as people they are difficult to grasp as well: they are often children who have failed to grow up or have values that are very worrisome. With their money and the development of Generative AI, their influence is only expanding. The wealth and power of Big Tech have greatly surpassed anything I could have imagined, and many of the current leaders in the industry are not the type of individuals I feel good about taking on bigger roles in our country. We can only hope that the industry and its leaders mature in the coming years. Kara tries to provide foresight into where the industry is headed and how it will impact the country’s future.
An easy, enjoyable, yet frightening read.
The world these entrepreneurs live in is nearly impossible to imagine, but then as people they are difficult to grasp as well: they are often children who have failed to grow up or have values that are very worrisome. With their money and the development of Generative AI, their influence is only expanding. The wealth and power of Big Tech have greatly surpassed anything I could have imagined, and many of the current leaders in the industry are not the type of individuals I feel good about taking on bigger roles in our country. We can only hope that the industry and its leaders mature in the coming years. Kara tries to provide foresight into where the industry is headed and how it will impact the country’s future.
An easy, enjoyable, yet frightening read.
July 16, 2024
Felt more like a commerce summary of big tech than an insider’s view. Didn’t fell like there was anything special about this book. I could’ve googled most of it.
February 28, 2024
It’s fine. There’s pretty much nothing new in it. If you listen to pivot, or have even marginally followed Kara’s career, save your money.
January 25, 2025
When I picked up this book, I was completely unaware of Kara Swisher's work. Never heard of her. I'm not a Luddite, but I'm not enthusiastic about tech either. But last year I did read Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (and A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?) and became more aware of the billionaire class and their influence on our world. Then I heard Swisher interviewed on the radio, probably doing promotion for this memoir, and her mentioning regular contact with Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg intrigued me.
Honestly, I wish that I skipped this book and could continue to be naïve about how much giant amoral corporations run our lives. Especially now, it is mucho depressing. This is my take-away from Burn Book:
Tech bros are overwhelmingly white men who have never felt unsafe in their lives and can't put themselves in the place of others who are not so privileged. The algorithms of their creations exhibit this lack of empathy. They start out socially awkward and end up acting like spoiled toddlers in bubbles of comfort/money that insulate them from reality. The omission of women from the industry is quite deliberate and they are happy to keep their ranks very male and uber-white. Capitalism trumps community every time. These guys are thin skinned and deeply insecure. According to Swisher, “These tech moguls are so rarely disagreed with that they now interpret valid questions as attacks.” Alarmingly, they appear to be trying to eliminate news media just to avoid having to answer questions.
In my opinion, the worst offenders are desperately lonely and have no idea how to fix that. They thought that gobs of money would make them happy (it didn't) and keep pursuing more money because they are unwilling to accept that they are wrong. Somehow they have come to believe that obscene wealth qualifies them to be leaders of society. They missed the memo that caring about other people as more than potential customers or sources of data is necessary to be a real leader. Worryingly, politicians seem to be following in their footsteps. Ironically, social media has created a climate in which only the power hungry are willing to brave public office and those who would bring valuable perspective are driven out.
I was ever so thankful for the chapter about the decent people in the tech biz. They get overshadowed by the loudmouth shnooks, but I'm comforted just a little by knowing that a few tech leaders have a moral compass and some empathy. I find it heartening that Swisher remains optimistic about the future, but I think we have some rough years ahead. However, as she says, the cat videos are still fun.
Honestly, I wish that I skipped this book and could continue to be naïve about how much giant amoral corporations run our lives. Especially now, it is mucho depressing. This is my take-away from Burn Book:
Tech bros are overwhelmingly white men who have never felt unsafe in their lives and can't put themselves in the place of others who are not so privileged. The algorithms of their creations exhibit this lack of empathy. They start out socially awkward and end up acting like spoiled toddlers in bubbles of comfort/money that insulate them from reality. The omission of women from the industry is quite deliberate and they are happy to keep their ranks very male and uber-white. Capitalism trumps community every time. These guys are thin skinned and deeply insecure. According to Swisher, “These tech moguls are so rarely disagreed with that they now interpret valid questions as attacks.” Alarmingly, they appear to be trying to eliminate news media just to avoid having to answer questions.
In my opinion, the worst offenders are desperately lonely and have no idea how to fix that. They thought that gobs of money would make them happy (it didn't) and keep pursuing more money because they are unwilling to accept that they are wrong. Somehow they have come to believe that obscene wealth qualifies them to be leaders of society. They missed the memo that caring about other people as more than potential customers or sources of data is necessary to be a real leader. Worryingly, politicians seem to be following in their footsteps. Ironically, social media has created a climate in which only the power hungry are willing to brave public office and those who would bring valuable perspective are driven out.
I was ever so thankful for the chapter about the decent people in the tech biz. They get overshadowed by the loudmouth shnooks, but I'm comforted just a little by knowing that a few tech leaders have a moral compass and some empathy. I find it heartening that Swisher remains optimistic about the future, but I think we have some rough years ahead. However, as she says, the cat videos are still fun.
April 20, 2024
With razor-sharp wit and decades experience reporting on tech, Swisher takes us behind the scenes to meet the digital revolution’s powerful insiders who continue to shape our world. Elon Musk believes Swisher’s no-holds-barred reportage makes her an a**. I think she’s brilliant.
March 10, 2024
Meh.
The billionaire (mostly) boys of tech that Kara reports on seem to be a boring bunch of businessmen. They were educated enough to capitalize on a technology that had just became ripe for some to write or buy the programs that made them rich. And she was smart enough to make this tech her beat. Still, it's all pretty dull.
If you want to read a beautifully written book about real geniuses to see how truly great minds think, read The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut. THAT is a great read and worth your time.
The billionaire (mostly) boys of tech that Kara reports on seem to be a boring bunch of businessmen. They were educated enough to capitalize on a technology that had just became ripe for some to write or buy the programs that made them rich. And she was smart enough to make this tech her beat. Still, it's all pretty dull.
If you want to read a beautifully written book about real geniuses to see how truly great minds think, read The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut. THAT is a great read and worth your time.
March 14, 2024
I adore Kara Swisher and adored this book and am so happy I chose to listen to it via reading it in print - her very distinctive voice really brings it to life for anyone used to listening to her interviews and podcast. She’s absolutely no nonsense but somehow also hilarious as hell and gives ZERO FUCKS but is also deeply professional and empathetic.
Side note: I maintain that my dream presidential ticket is Swisher - Cuban ~ they’d fix it ALL.
Source: Audible credit
Side note: I maintain that my dream presidential ticket is Swisher - Cuban ~ they’d fix it ALL.
Source: Audible credit
April 19, 2024
After finishing Burn Book, which was admittedly very entertaining, I read the NYT review. It articulated better than I can what I found vexing and ultimately frustrating:
“There is a compelling tension here: Even as Swisher is rising into “Silicon Valley royalty,” as a 2014 New York magazine profile put it, Silicon Valley is, in her telling, descending into the gutter. This tension is scarcely acknowledged in those chapters that detail her relationship with various leading Tech figures. These seem instead designed to bolster her reputation as a fearless but fair-minded, straight-talking reporter…
Her forthrightness goes some way in helping us believe that “Burn Book” doesn’t merely represent a convenient pivot, as they say, from Tech royalty to Tech heretic at a time when strident industry criticism is trending hard. But “Burn Book”’s fatal flaw, the reason it can never fully dispel the whiff of opportunism that dooms any memoir, is that Swisher never shows in any convincing detail how her entanglement with Silicon Valley clouded her judgment. The story of her change of heart is thus undercut by the self-aggrandizing portrait that rests stubbornly at its core.”
“There is a compelling tension here: Even as Swisher is rising into “Silicon Valley royalty,” as a 2014 New York magazine profile put it, Silicon Valley is, in her telling, descending into the gutter. This tension is scarcely acknowledged in those chapters that detail her relationship with various leading Tech figures. These seem instead designed to bolster her reputation as a fearless but fair-minded, straight-talking reporter…
Her forthrightness goes some way in helping us believe that “Burn Book” doesn’t merely represent a convenient pivot, as they say, from Tech royalty to Tech heretic at a time when strident industry criticism is trending hard. But “Burn Book”’s fatal flaw, the reason it can never fully dispel the whiff of opportunism that dooms any memoir, is that Swisher never shows in any convincing detail how her entanglement with Silicon Valley clouded her judgment. The story of her change of heart is thus undercut by the self-aggrandizing portrait that rests stubbornly at its core.”
April 21, 2024
So bored, giving up at 125
March 30, 2024
3.5 roundup. Audiobook reads as a long podcast episode.
This book is about Kara S and the tech landscape is just a backdrop
This book is about Kara S and the tech landscape is just a backdrop
March 29, 2024
"Needless to say, I had the last laugh"
May 7, 2024
This is tough to rate: my enjoyment of this book is maybe a 3, I think mainly due to already knowing the majority of these stories from Swisher’s journalism and podcast with Galloway. I am a huge fan of her work; I don’t know another journalist who has seen the birth of the tech industry like she has and remained completely unafraid to ask tough questions and consistently call out bad behavior and dangerous deeds. The trajectory of tech, from Al Gore era internet to early Apple/Microsoft/Amazon/Netflix to Open AI, as viewed by her is remarkable. Her perspective is refreshing and her takes are rarely wrong. However, not a lot of new info for folks who have followed her career.
March 7, 2024
3.5 stars. I like Kara Swisher. She is full of swagger and she’s a good storyteller. Reading about how she’s dominated (or at least countered) so many of the big men of tech is a delight, and I especially enjoyed her stories about working for John McLaughlin when she was beginning her career (how does one find such confidence at such a young age?!).
This is a memoir, but it’s also chronicle of how the internet went from being a playground full of idealistic promise to the hellscape it’s now become.
This is a memoir, but it’s also chronicle of how the internet went from being a playground full of idealistic promise to the hellscape it’s now become.
November 20, 2024
A great rumination on the naissance of the tech bro and what that means as we move into the future. Swisher is at her best in remembering her million lives as a tech journalist and voice of reason to the newly-minted boy geniuses of the valley. If you can, listen to Swisher on the audiobook.
November 17, 2024
I was entertained. The author reads it herself on the audiobook and that would be one criticism I’d make - she talks so fast even at “normal” speed. She’s super smart and clearly knows her field (tech journalism) and tells all in an often snarky manner, but I’m a big fan of journalists in general (I’m married to one) so the tone did not annoy me as it did some reviewers. She has chapters for all the “bigs”, eg Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, etc, and takes no prisoners. She can be brutal and has strong opinions, but I thought she was great. I wasn’t previously familiar with her work but my husband recommended this book to me.
September 13, 2024
The year is 2014, and there's me, just out of college, impressionable, idealistic, and still getting my feet wet in the job market. Recode, the website Kara Swisher would start with Walt Mossberg, had just been launched. As a public relations guy, I found their no-holds-barred approach refreshing and a far cry from the state of technology journalism in India.
But why did I like her? Well, for starters, she refused to drink the Kool-Aid.
To me, Burn Book felt like sitting on a bus as Kara took you on a ride through the developments in Silicon Valley from the early 90s to the present day. However, what is different about how she approaches it vs. how others approach it is that she is comfortable pointing out the multitudes within venerated founders and calling some business decisions for what they were: boneheaded. To give an example, Yahoo - which towards the end of the 90s might've had a claim for the most prominent consumer brand on earth - allowed Google to set up shop on the website at next to no cost, failing to see that they were signing their death sentence - at least in terms of search.
The other thing I found prescient then and do now is how Kara saw through the do-good intentions of certain tech luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg. Considering the state of affairs in India, I can't think of a company whose fortunes have swung more wildly in the last decade. Around 2015, Zuckerberg knew that India was a huge market for Facebook, and he wanted to do more than merely connect people. So, he suggested Free Basics, a boneheaded idea that galvanised journalists, activists, etc., to scream net neutrality. In 2024, Facebook went from a company that thinks about these issues to a recent interview with Mark Zuckerberg, who claimed he is done apologising.
This is precisely the kind of hypocrisy that Kara points out repeatedly in the book, especially in the cases of Elon Musk (which I found nuanced, much more than I'd expected) and Marc Andreessen.
I won't get into her other critiques, of which there are many, but the question she leaves unanswered is the state of tech journalism. In my brief tenure as a journalist, I was taught all the 'rules' around facts vs opinion. Today, journalists publish stories and moonlight as podcast hosts, and who can deny they don't have some of the cache that a Joe Rogan has? PR reps would much rather deal with a tech bro and his podcast than a journalist like Kara Swisher, and what is to say that will not become a default? What if a company ignores journalists and discloses all their information on social channels or with a pliant podcast?
When I reached the end, I realized the importance of books like Burn Book. They are accessible and get to the point by cutting through the BS. Yes, it will polarise some folks and make them want to read something more 'serious', but in their own way, they are also refusing to accept that we're collectively refusing to hold tech leaders to account. Kara suggests that maybe we should think long and hard about that!
But why did I like her? Well, for starters, she refused to drink the Kool-Aid.
To me, Burn Book felt like sitting on a bus as Kara took you on a ride through the developments in Silicon Valley from the early 90s to the present day. However, what is different about how she approaches it vs. how others approach it is that she is comfortable pointing out the multitudes within venerated founders and calling some business decisions for what they were: boneheaded. To give an example, Yahoo - which towards the end of the 90s might've had a claim for the most prominent consumer brand on earth - allowed Google to set up shop on the website at next to no cost, failing to see that they were signing their death sentence - at least in terms of search.
The other thing I found prescient then and do now is how Kara saw through the do-good intentions of certain tech luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg. Considering the state of affairs in India, I can't think of a company whose fortunes have swung more wildly in the last decade. Around 2015, Zuckerberg knew that India was a huge market for Facebook, and he wanted to do more than merely connect people. So, he suggested Free Basics, a boneheaded idea that galvanised journalists, activists, etc., to scream net neutrality. In 2024, Facebook went from a company that thinks about these issues to a recent interview with Mark Zuckerberg, who claimed he is done apologising.
This is precisely the kind of hypocrisy that Kara points out repeatedly in the book, especially in the cases of Elon Musk (which I found nuanced, much more than I'd expected) and Marc Andreessen.
I won't get into her other critiques, of which there are many, but the question she leaves unanswered is the state of tech journalism. In my brief tenure as a journalist, I was taught all the 'rules' around facts vs opinion. Today, journalists publish stories and moonlight as podcast hosts, and who can deny they don't have some of the cache that a Joe Rogan has? PR reps would much rather deal with a tech bro and his podcast than a journalist like Kara Swisher, and what is to say that will not become a default? What if a company ignores journalists and discloses all their information on social channels or with a pliant podcast?
When I reached the end, I realized the importance of books like Burn Book. They are accessible and get to the point by cutting through the BS. Yes, it will polarise some folks and make them want to read something more 'serious', but in their own way, they are also refusing to accept that we're collectively refusing to hold tech leaders to account. Kara suggests that maybe we should think long and hard about that!
April 17, 2024
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t thrown stones.
I found the author to be extremely judgmental and blind to the fact that she shares many of the same (mostly negative) characteristics she labels the people she interviews.
She is smarter than the people she interviews, she is smarter than her employers, she is smarter then the titans that came up with the idea to make them a titan. Everyone has tried to hire her at some point because she is just that prophetic and yet she chose to stay on the noble path and “only” earn $1m as a journalist vs. selling out to corporate greed. She also sees nothing wrong with her behavior to compromise family members and propel her own career under the guise of “because I am an esteemed journalist”, my actions are justified. However, no one else’s actions are justified and if a titan makes a decision she doesn’t like, she goes straight to they are greedy, egomaniacs.
The 1 star was for her sentence construction and the behind the curtain access to modern day tech wizards, and that was generous.
I found the author to be extremely judgmental and blind to the fact that she shares many of the same (mostly negative) characteristics she labels the people she interviews.
She is smarter than the people she interviews, she is smarter than her employers, she is smarter then the titans that came up with the idea to make them a titan. Everyone has tried to hire her at some point because she is just that prophetic and yet she chose to stay on the noble path and “only” earn $1m as a journalist vs. selling out to corporate greed. She also sees nothing wrong with her behavior to compromise family members and propel her own career under the guise of “because I am an esteemed journalist”, my actions are justified. However, no one else’s actions are justified and if a titan makes a decision she doesn’t like, she goes straight to they are greedy, egomaniacs.
The 1 star was for her sentence construction and the behind the curtain access to modern day tech wizards, and that was generous.
March 21, 2024
I am really not the right person to write an objective review of this book. There’s so much name recognition here. It all takes me back to when I used to religiously listen to This Week in Tech every week along with some other shows on the twit network. I kind of gave up all that as the technology news kept getting darker and darker and I got more and more into listening to audiobooks instead. Still, those are good memories.
I can only say that I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I also have to laugh when I read other reviewers complaining about how Swisher made this book all about herself. Maybe they need to look up the meaning of the word memoir.
Anyway, I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in Silicon Valley and all that it has wrought.
I can only say that I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I also have to laugh when I read other reviewers complaining about how Swisher made this book all about herself. Maybe they need to look up the meaning of the word memoir.
Anyway, I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in Silicon Valley and all that it has wrought.
April 9, 2024
I didn't know who the author was prior to reading this book, and I had no interest in any part of the book that related to her personal life. Swisher spends WAY too much time congratulating herself on her career and her connections. The "insider" information wasn't even that exciting. I wasn't exactly surprised to learn that the kings of tech are all man-babies.
July 31, 2024
Truth. Life around some executives is the biggest eye roll. I don’t miss it, and had a bit of PTSD moments arise when she told parallel scenarios of frustration, childlike antics, and elitism. I like her fighter skills! 💥🤛
June 11, 2024
Her narcissism is so gratuitous it makes it unreadable
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