Thorough, high-caliber investigative reporting every social media user should read.
An exposé on the many troubling aspects of the social media titan’s rise to prominence.
Frenkel and Kang, prizewinning New York Times journalists, chronicle the results of more than 1,000 hours of interviews with more than 400 people involved in this sordid story, including corporate executives, employees, investors, lawmakers, academics, and cultural observers, as well as “never-reported emails, memos, and white papers involving or approved by top executives.” The authors focus primarily on the time between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, delivering a damning, often shocking portrait of finger-pointing and PR turmoil. Underpinning the narrative are a variety of global scandals involving Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, including the Cambridge Analytica debacle, the Russian cyber-meddling ordeal, and the use of Facebook and other social media to livestream the January Capitol insurrection. Ultimately, the authors assert that many Facebook executives had knowledge of the company’s sketchy ethics but were powerless to create changes to circumvent problems or, as Frenkel and Kang exhaustively attest, to even redirect Zuckerberg’s attention. The authors probe the business relationship between Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, a former Google exec with ruthless advertising instincts and data mining experience. The profile of Sandberg reveals fascinating details about how she employed the most controversial methodologies to surveil and capture “connected” Facebook user data and behavior patterns on the internet in order to maximize ad revenue. Also startling is the meticulous hunting abilities of Sonya Ahuja, the company’s “rat catcher,” who mercilessly rooted out internal harassment complaints and whistleblowers. This sharp study serves as a convincing, effectively researched and sourced report of how Zuckerberg and Sandberg erected their social media empire with controversial tactics and questionable management styles, all while avoiding a minefield of incriminating investigations and lawsuits. Though Zuckerberg and Sandberg initially agreed to participate in the authors’ interviews (if just to deliver their perspective to readers), eventually they expressed “no interest in participating.”
Thorough, high-caliber investigative reporting every social media user should read.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-296067-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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