
Burn Book
A Tech Love Story
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Narrated by:
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Kara Swisher
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By:
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Kara Swisher
About this listen
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.©2024 Kara Swisher (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio
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Interesting
- By Lexi on 03-02-24
By: Maeve McQuillan
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What This Comedian Said Will Shock You
- By: Bill Maher
- Narrated by: Bill Maher
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Some of the smartest commentary about what’s happening in America is coming from a comedian—this comedian being Bill Maher. If you want to understand what’s wrong with this country, it turns out that one of the best informed and most thought-provoking analysts is this very funny pothead.
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Great book by Bill Maher
- By michelle nachtigall on 05-22-24
By: Bill Maher
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Breaking Twitter
- Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History
- By: Ben Mezrich
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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BREAKING TWITTER takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time—Elon Musk—and the company that represents our culture’s dearest hope for a shared global conversation. From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides.
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Neither insightful nor exciting.
- By Sutherland Junge on 11-18-23
By: Ben Mezrich
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The Showman
- Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky
- By: Simon Shuster
- Narrated by: Daniel Gamburg
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Time correspondent Simon Shuster chronicles the life and wartime leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky from the dressing rooms of his variety show in Ukraine to the muddy trenches of his war with Russia. Based on four years of reporting; extensive travels with President Zelensky to the front; and dozens of interviews with him, his wife, his friends and enemies, his advisers, ministers and military commanders, The Showman tells an intimate and eye-opening story of the President’s evolution from a slapstick actor to a symbol of resilience.
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Cuts through the war propaganda fog!
- By Eric W Thomas on 02-15-24
By: Simon Shuster
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The Sirens' Call
- How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource
- By: Chris Hayes
- Narrated by: Chris Hayes
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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We all feel it—the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, “With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.”
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Thoughtful and captivating
- By Nancy on 02-02-25
By: Chris Hayes
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Abundance
- By: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.
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Advice to the Democratic Party from Klein & Thompson
- By Betsy Fowler on 03-31-25
By: Ezra Klein, and others
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Murder the Truth
- Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful
- By: David Enrich
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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David Enrich, the New York Times Business Investigations Editor and the #1 bestselling author of Dark Towers, produces his most consequential and far-reaching investigation yet: an in-depth exposé of the broad campaign—orchestrated by elite Americans—to silence dissent and protect the powerful.
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The current threat against journalists
- By Kirk Writes on 04-04-25
By: David Enrich
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Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
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Powerful and Important work.
- By Frank Nance on 02-28-25
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Super Pumped
- The Battle for Uber
- By: Mike Isaac
- Narrated by: Holter Graham, Mike Isaac
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against the rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley during the mobile era. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a pause-resisting story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior, that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic 12-month periods in American corporate history.
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A forced narrative and a bad version of Bad Blood
- By Benji on 09-09-19
By: Mike Isaac
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The Four
- The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
- By: Scott Galloway
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong. For all that's been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway. Instead of buying the myths these companies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions.
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Pessimistic and narrow minded
- By Patrick on 01-19-18
By: Scott Galloway
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Backfired: Attention Deficit
- By: Leon Neyfakh, Prologue Projects
- Narrated by: Leon Neyfakh, Arielle Pardes
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Original Recording
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ADHD may be the defining diagnosis of our time. According to the latest data, more than 10 percent of American children (that’s 7.1 million kids) have been diagnosed with ADHD. And the number of stimulant prescriptions for adults in their 30s has shot up nearly threefold since 2012. In recent years, this explosion in demand has combined with other factors to create a widespread stimulant shortage in the US. In the second installment of Backfired, cohosts Leon Neyfakh and Arielle Pardes look at the unintended consequences of the ADHD industry, and trace the surprising path that brought us here.
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Avoid if recently diagnosed with ADHD as an Adult
- By Anonymous User on 10-05-24
By: Leon Neyfakh, and others
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Why We're Polarized
- By: Ezra Klein
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics.
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Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
- By Tony on 01-29-20
By: Ezra Klein
What listeners say about Burn Book
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- Christine Tachner
- 02-28-24
Get it while it’s hot!
Tech stinks now. Kara is unafraid to point out where the stench is coming from. If you want to know exactly when and how Big Tech went from cool as Fonzie to jumping the shark, put on your oven mitts and push play on Burn Book.
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7 people found this helpful
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- H. Cheeley
- 03-19-24
Great Insight - Needs a professional narrator
As a woman in tech and a Kara Swisher fan, I really enjoyed listening to this book. Swisher can definitely come across as a know-it-all, but I love how she speaks truth to power and calls BS on anyone deserving. About 3/4 of the way through the book I got really sick of her mumbling and fast talking. I think the book would’ve done better to either give Kara a speech coach on narration, or had a professional narrator reading it.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Shantanu Sharma
- 03-29-24
Very engaging
I have been following Kara’s work for many years and this book really captures her essence. I’ve always appreciated her willingness to call out BS and this book is an extension of that. I enjoyed it throughly.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Barbara K. Anderson
- 03-15-24
Listen to this book to learn what you don’t know. Kara is continually entertaining.
Kara’s writing is so carefully and thoughtfully composed. Her voice fits perfectly with her lnowledgeable writing.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Joan
- 03-24-24
Great read, poignant, personal informative and fun
I am a fan of Kara Swisher and found the book a captivating read. Her personal perspective on the birth of the digital economy and how it has changed the world, gives even more insight into the people that shaped our current culture. I found her relationships with these individuals, so informative and honest. Her frank nature makes the storytelling that much more interesting. She tells a fascinating story, and more importantly her call to action about controls on technological development couldn't be more timely.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Patricia Ciavarelli
- 03-28-24
I love this perspective
To my embarrassment I only recently heard of this author. I saw her on a talkshow in which she was being interviewed about this book being born in the 60s and growing up in the 80s and 90s. I am a child of tech myself and really loved a lot of her opinions and her history and I really enjoyed the book.
Her writing/conversation style is easy to read and listen to.
I thought it was just perfect if I didn’t always agree with her opinions
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2 people found this helpful
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- Erin
- 03-17-24
Thoroughly enjoyed
Great memories, truths, background, analogies, and a real honest look at all the dimensions of digital & the mighty few who are determining generational destinies.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Glen
- 03-08-24
Loved it
History of the Internet with Swisher sass. Great listen especially if you enjoyed Kara's podcasts
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- Ian
- 03-27-24
Fearless
Swisher writes with clarity and precision. She avoids bullshit. Her inclusion of personal family details adds perspective to her writing about the monarchy of the tech world. Her decision to include her cardiac repair story encourages me to believe that she will be here to provide more chapters to this very human/tech drama. Thank you Kara for sharing your insights and devilish sense of humor!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Gabriel
- 03-30-24
A fun ride through the sharpest writer in tech
This is a great listen for anyone who follows and works on tech. Kara gives a great narration that balances between her patented cynicism and humanity that makes her so great. While I’d like a more expansive story that goes beyond the big names that you’d expect, she shines light on the personalities that shape our world.
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1 person found this helpful