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Super Pumped
The Battle for Uber
387 pages
A high-octane, jaw-dropping ride through the toxic excess and spectacular hubris of Silicon Valley's most aggressive startup.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like being strapped into a runaway sports car with a brilliant but reckless driver at the wheel. It is a propulsive, sweat-inducing plunge into the dark heart of Silicon Valley excess, where the dizzying rush of innovation quickly sours into a chaotic nightmare of unchecked ambition. The narrative moves at a breakneck speed, mirroring the 'growth at all costs' mentality of its subjects, while the prose remains sharp, cinematic, and deeply reported. You will find yourself constantly shaking your head in disbelief at the sheer audacity and toxicity on display. It is an absolute feast for readers who devour corporate thrillers and true stories of spectacular hubris, offering a tense, gripping, and ultimately satisfying portrait of a modern empire's reckoning.
- Mood
- frenetic
- tense
- chaotic
- high-stakes
- Tone
- sharp
- investigative
- dramatic
- critical
- incredulous
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- unchecked ambition · toxic corporate culture · Silicon Valley hubris · the dark side of innovation · wealth and excess
- The writing
- Crisp, cinematic, and deeply reported, transforming complex business maneuvers into a gripping, thriller-like narrative.
- The arc
- Moves from the dizzying rush of rapid success into a mounting sense of disbelief and outrage, culminating in a tense, satisfying reckoning.
- Who it's for
- Readers fascinated by corporate drama, tech industry exposés, and true stories of spectacular hubris and downfall.
Content notes
- toxic workplace dynamics
- sexism and misogyny
- corporate malfeasance
- psychological manipulation
About the book
"A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against the rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley during the mobile era. In June 2017, Travis Kalanick, the hard-charging CEO of Uber, was ousted in a boardroom coup that capped a brutal year for the transportation giant. Uber had catapulted to the top of the tech world yet for many came to symbolize everything wrong with Silicon Valley. In the tradition of Brad Stone's Everything Store and John Carreyrou's Bad Blood, award-winning investigative reporter Mike Isaac's Super Pumped delivers a gripping account of Uber's rapid rise, its pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company's toxic internal culture and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth and bad behavior, that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history."--
Description from Open Library.
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