The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.
For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors.
Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.
Back in 2018 this book was everywhere. And it stayed popular for quite a while. I did this book as a book discussion title in February of 2020 with ARRT and you can read the notes here.
I read it with my ears as an audiobook, so did my husband. Very few books overlap like that for us. It was bonkers to see what Elizabeth Holmes was able to do. It was also a refreshing true crime story that did not involve a serial killer.
Well, you all know where this is going..... Obviously Bad Blood is back and paperback sales of this book are, once again, through the roof as reported by PW here because of the popularity of the documentary You Can See Everything.
This book was still in most library collections because it was so critically acclaimed and Holmes had stayed in the news meaning people sought the book out on a regular enough basis that it was not weeded. And now, it is checked out in every possible format at most libraries (including my own).
So first things first, good news if you still own it. Yes you can add more paperback copies or ebooks to satisfy demand. But also because it is an older title that was popular back when it first came out, there are MANY Reddit threads of readalike options. (Scroll past the AI options).
And there are also great threads of Reddit book suggestions for non-murder true crime.
We are not going to be able to keep adding copies to satisfy demand on this one. And, interest in this title isn't going away anytime soon. The movie will stay on the radar and in the mainstream discussion from now through the Academy Awards in March 2027.
So add what you can, but use this opportunity to make displays and lists of your MANY true crime offerings that are NOT murder-based that they can enjoy while they wait.
Viral books and movies bring people into the library, sometimes for the first time in years (and "into the library" is also if they only access us through Libby). Sure they will be slightly disappointed if Bad Blood isn't available. but when you show them so many other awesome choices to enjoy while they wait their turn, many (not all of course) will be excited to rediscover the library and all it has to offer.
And all of this is possible because we don't just keep the newest books on our shelves. We always have great titles from the past that are still great reads if only our patrons knew there were there, hiding in the stacks.
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