Name: Valley of the Gods
ISBN: 9781476778945

Alexandra Wolfe

"A Wall Street Journal columnist for "Weekend Confidential" explores the hubris and ambition of Silicon Valley innovators who are changing the world, tracing the stories of three upstarts who left promising college educations in favor of developing billion-dollar ideas"--NoveList.

A Silicon Valley Story

Valley of the Gods

Reporter Alexandra Wolfe’s biting but admiring story of Silicon Valley, and the men and women whose hubris and ambition are changing the world. Each year, young people from around the world go to Silicon Valley to hatch an idea, start a company, strike it rich, and become powerful and famous. In “a jauntily paced anthropological look at Northern California’s techtopia” (Bloomberg Businessweek), reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal Alexandra Wolfe follows three of these upstarts who have “stopped out” of college and real life in the hopes of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. Meet the billionaires who go to training clubs for thirty-minute “body slams” designed to fit in with the start-up schedule; attend parties where people devour peanut butter-and-jelly sushi rolls; and date and seduce in a romantic culture in which thick glasses, baggy jeans, and a t-shirt is the costume of any sex symbol (and where a jacket and tie symbolize mediocrity). Through Wolfe’s eyes, we discover how they date and marry, how they dress and live, how they plot and dream, and how they have created a business world and an economic order that has made us all devotees of them. In her blistering and hysterical examination of this new ruling class, Wolfe “offers a revealing peek inside the privilege, power, and profligacy of Silicon Valley” (Town & Country). Valley of the Gods “captures the absurdity of this brave new world, pierces the hype, but also conveys the dreams and the passions that can shape a world’s economy” (USA TODAY).

Cristian Garcia

I came to know about this book while listening to the New York Times Book review podcast. I decided to give the book and within a week I was done. The podcast host discussed on who was the audience for this book and I have the same question now. The book is part fiction, part real and it follows a bunch of teenagers admitted to the 1st batch of Peter Thiel's Fellowship program.

I loved this part though:
"The young, aspiring entrepreneurs were seduced by the lifestyle, by the oddity of it all. They were the new waiters and waitresses on Sunset Boulevard trying to win Oscars in Hollywood".

Valley of the Gods A Silicon Valley Story

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