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Book excerpt: “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” by Kara Swisher
Simon & Schuster
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Journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher has penned a memoir, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” (Simon & Schuster), about her journey as a reporter chronicling the Silicon Valley shenanigans of arrogant Internet billionaires and their reckless empires.
Read an excerpt below.
“Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” by Kara Swisher
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I’ve always hated the phrase “speak truth to power,” because it assumes all power is bad. It should really be “speak truth to power when the power is false or damaging— or even just plain bizarre.”
In the bizarre camp was when I found myself staring at an ice sculpture of a woman whose breast was oozing White Russians, a Kahlua and cream concoction. I was a guest at the baby shower party for Google founder Sergey Brin and his wife, Anne Wojcicki, who were expecting their first child in 2008. Naturally, they decided to celebrate with a huge party in the factory district of San Francisco. Before you could lift a glass to the icy nipple to get a sip, guests had to brave a jungle of dangling baby photos of Sergey and Anne at the door. The club’s entrance was manned by the kind of preternaturally ebullient and hyper-organized women that always seemed to surround the rich of Silicon Valley.
“Would you like a diaper? Or a onesie?” asked a young woman with amazingly swingy blonde hair and a very sincere smile, as if the question were not even slightly f****d up. But we were in San Francisco, after all, where such happenings were apparently popular among its citizens. I try not to judge, even when I am absolutely judging.
To be clear: I was judging hard.
But this was worse than a simple case of sexual preferences. This young woman was asking my baby-wear preference, because that was the “fun” part of the night. Guests either got to wear a diaper with an oversized comical pin, a ruffled baby hat that came with a rattle, or adult-sized footy pajamas accessorized with a teddy bear and a sucker. I declined it all immediately, which made the swingy hair stop swinging and the smile shift to a frown. “Everyone has to wear one,” she insisted. “Everyone is wearing one!”
Not me! I ran into the party before she could lay a talcum-powdered hand on me and found some of the most powerful people in tech and media— all decked out as newborns. Brin wore a onesie as he roller-skated around the room. Wendi Deng, then the wife of News Corp titan Rupert Murdoch (whom I had taken to referring to as “Uncle Satan”), had chosen a diaper and sucker combo. Deng quickly asked me how she looked, which was disturbing since she was wearing some kind of leather pants and stiletto boots under the giant Pampers, and that was a freaky disconnect I preferred not to be experiencing at that moment (or, frankly, ever). Thankfully, Uncle Satan was not in attendance, so
I got to miss that particular visual. And, just as thankfully, over in a corner, then Mayor Gavin Newsom, who had grown close to the Google founders, was wearing a normal suit.
Excerpted from “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” by Kara Swisher. Copyright © 2024 by Kara Swisher. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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“Burn Book: A Tech Love Story” by Kara Swisher
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1-month-old twins who died with mother believed to be the youngest-known Hurricane Helene victims
Month-old twin boys are believed to be the youngest known victims of Hurricane Helene. The boys died alongside their mother last week when a large tree fell through the roof of their home in Thomson, Georgia.
Obie Williams, grandfather of the twins, said he could hear babies crying and branches battering the windows when he spoke with his daughter, Kobe Williams, 27, on the phone last week as the storm tore through Georgia.
The single mother had been sitting in bed holding sons Khyzier and Khazmir and chatting on the phone with various family members while the storm raged outside.
AP
Kobe’s mother, Mary Jones, was staying with her daughter, helping her take care of the babies. She was on the other side of the trailer home when she heard a loud crash as a tree fell through the roof of her daughter’s bedroom.
“Kobe, Kobe, answer me, please,” Jones cried out in desperation, but she received no response.
Kobe and the twins were found dead.
“I’d seen pictures when they were born and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t made it out there yet to meet them,” Obie Williams told The Associated Press days after the storm ravaged eastern Georgia. “Now I’ll never get to meet my grandsons. It’s devastating.”
The babies, born Aug. 20, are the youngest known victims of a storm that had claimed more than 200 lives across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas. Among the other young victims are a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south in Washington County, Georgia.
“She was so excited to be a mother of those beautiful twin boys,” said Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe’ Jones’ niece. “She was doing such a good job and was so proud to be their mom.”
Jones-Hampton, who considered Kobe a sister, said the family is in shock and heartbroken.
In Obie Williams’ home city of Augusta, 30 miles east of his daughter’s home in Thomson, power lines stretched along the sidewalks, tree branches blocked the roads and utility poles lay cracked and broken. The debris left him trapped in his neighborhood near the South Carolina border for a little over a day after the storm barreled through.
He said one of his sons dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to check on Kobe, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he found.
Many of his 14 other children are still without power in their homes across Georgia. Some have sought refuge in Atlanta, and others have traveled to Augusta to see their father and mourn together, he said.
He described his daughter as a lovable, social and strong woman. She always had a smile and loved to make people laugh, he said.
And she loved to dance, Jones-Hampton said.
“That was my baby,” Williams said. “And everybody loved her.”
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