How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University
A rigorous, self-assured, propulsive, at times terrifying portrait of a dweebocracy that 'sets the agenda for the planet' ... He...bring[s] a place vividly to life. The best nonfiction doesn’t declaim from oxygen-deprived heights; it ports you into a world and lets the relevance emerge ... The central tension of this book is that Baker sets out both to climb Silicon Valley’s ivory tower and to bring it crashing down ... This dual-track approach would probably discredit an established journalist. For a college freshman who is still figuring himself out, it is understandable — and makes him harder to dismiss. Baker still admires much of the tech world. He still believes it does good and wants its approval. But he confronts his dreamland and concludes, painfully, that it is rotten, indifferent, built on lies, craving power for its own sake.
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The kid’s got a story to tell, about how a cub reporter felled a titan of science and higher ed, all while doing normal undergrad things like hallucinating his way through a term paper, (theoretically) going to class and breaking up with his high school girlfriend ... Paints a Hollywood-ready, more-absurd-than-parody Stanford where the lawn fountains might as well be filled with $100 bills ... He also often characterizes himself as the sole principled one ... It’s hard to pen scenes like these without looking self-justifying. As excellent a journalist as Baker turns out to be, he’s less successful as a memoirist, whose task isn’t to build a case but to tug the strings of the self’s knot. With more maturity, the current college senior might have more self-awareness of how such lines come off ... For now, though, what a journalist. If Baker’s portrait of Stanford could be its own movie...is gripping account of how a tip turned into a history-making investigation has the makings of All the President’s Men.
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Buzzy ... A crackerjack newspaper story ... Terrific ... Baker’s account of assembling the Tessier-Lavigne reporting illustrates how meticulous investigative journalists work ... How to Rule the World is a coming-of-age story, a campus story, and a newspaper story, but above all, it’s a horror story.
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