Six non-fiction books about crime & general bad behavior in Silicon Valley

Kathy Wang grew up in Northern California and is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two children.

Wang's debut novel Family Trust was a Costco Pennie’s Pick, Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, and the inaugural selection of the Buzzfeed Book Club. Her second novel Impostor Syndrome will be published by Custom House/HarperCollins in June 2021.

At CrimeReads Wang tagged six of her "favorite non-fiction books about crime and general bad behavior in Silicon Valley," including:

Super Pumped, by Mike Isaac

This book charts the rise and fall of Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and CEO, who revolutionized the gig economy. We follow Kalanick as he expands Uber while maintaining an iron grip over control of the company—growth, growth, growth being his chief mantra, and we watch as he does everything from deceiving Apple (and enraging Tim Cook) to personally targeting journalists. This is another tale, like with Bad Blood, in which the reporter becomes part of the story. In Isaac’s case, it is when an employee at Uber comes to him with documentation of illegal tracking programs—and you see Travis Kalanick go from being king of the world, to being pushed out of the still very successful company that he founded.

Also, if you enjoy Super Pumped, I also highly recommend Whistleblower, by Susan Fowler. Fowler, a former engineer at Uber, outlines her very personal experience with the company. She’s also an excellent writer, perceptive and clever, even while facing increasingly outrageous treatment from her management and HR.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue