Engrossing account of the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the now-shuttered online drug bazaar the Silk Road.
Vanity Fair special correspondent Bilton (Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, 2013, etc.) ties his interest in technology to a gritty pursuit tale of the drug underground as it migrated to cyberspace. As the author writes, the Silk Road “could be living proof, Ross fantasized, that legalizing drugs was the best way to stop violence and oppression in the world.” Seemingly another bright, restless millennial, Ulbricht enacted his libertarian beliefs by founding a drug marketplace intended to make purchasing safer and undermine the drug war. Utilizing the “Dark Web” technologies of TOR and bitcoin, Ulbricht’s site opened in 2011 and immediately thrived: “Hundreds of people were now selling drugs on the site, and thousands were buying.” An outlaw subculture quickly developed, drawing in dealers, acolytes, hackers, and scammers; Ulbricht encouraged the notoriety, developing a menacing alter ego, the “Dread Pirate Roberts.” However, he overestimated his ability to avoid law enforcement scrutiny, beginning with low-level mail inspectors suddenly finding numerous identical envelopes of Ecstasy: “Ross had picked a fight with the biggest bully on earth, and the bully was about to punch back.” Chapters generally alternate between Ulbricht’s efforts to stabilize the website while covering his tracks with a self-consciously romantic fugitive lifestyle and the increasingly frantic investigation, which involved competing teams from different agencies (a few of whose members were later convicted of siphoning Ulbricht’s bitcoins and other malfeasance). Ultimately, the Silk Road spun out of Ulbricht’s control, to the point that he was soliciting murders for hire and allowing disguised federal agents to infiltrate the site’s administration. Dramatically arrested by the FBI in a San Francisco library in 2013, he received a life sentence. Bilton writes in a breezy, colloquial style, punctuated by occasional pulpy asides, and he aptly manages the technological arcana of this sprawling story.
A fast-paced, readable true-crime tale that frames the likely future of the underground economy.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59184-814-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BUSINESS | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | TRUE CRIME | BUSINESS
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BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
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PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The debut memoir from the pop and fashion star.
Early on, Simpson describes the book she didn’t write: “a motivational manual telling you how to live your best life.” Though having committed to the lucrative deal years before, she “walked away,” fearing any sort of self-help advice she might give would be hypocritical. Outwardly, Simpson was at the peak of her success, with her fashion line generating “one billion dollars in annual sales.” However, anxiety was getting the better of her, and she admits she’d become a “feelings addict,” just needing “enough noise to distract me from the pain I’d been avoiding since childhood. The demons of traumatic abuse that refused to let me sleep at night—Tylenol PM at age twelve, red wine and Ambien as a grown, scared woman. Those same demons who perched on my shoulder, and when they saw a man as dark as them, leaned in to my ear to whisper, ‘Just give him your light. See if it saves him…’ ” On Halloween 2017, Simpson hit rock bottom, and, with the intervention of her devoted friends and husband, began to address her addictions and underlying fears. In this readable but overlong narrative, the author traces her childhood as a Baptist preacher’s daughter moving 18 times before she “hit fifth grade,” and follows her remarkable rise to fame as a singer. She reveals the psychological trauma resulting from years of sexual abuse by a family friend, experiences that drew her repeatedly into bad relationships with men, most publicly with ex-husband Nick Lachey. Admitting that she was attracted to the validating power of an audience, Simpson analyzes how her failings and triumphs have enabled her to take control of her life, even as she was hounded by the press and various music and movie executives about her weight. Simpson’s memoir contains plenty of personal and professional moments for fans to savor.
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289996-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
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