Theo Baker

How to Rule the World

The instant New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year (So Far) by Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Apple Books"A rigorous, self-assured, propulsive, at times terrifying portrait of a dweebocracy that 'sets the agenda for the planet' . . . in the tradition of Michael Lewis's Wall Street chronicle Liar's Poker." -The New York Times"If Baker's portrait of Stanford could be its own movie (The Internship crossed with The Skulls), his gripping account of how a tip turned into a history-making investigation has the makings of All the President's Men." -The San Francisco Chronicle "Poignant, maddening, and genuinely hilarious, How to Rule the World is to be devoured-and fast, before Stanford buys up and sets fire to every copy. (Talk about a burn book!)" -Mark LeibovichFrom Theo Baker, winner of the George Polk Award for his investigation that brought down Stanford's president, comes a revelatory and gripping account of Silicon Valley hubris.Slush funds. Shell companies. Yacht parties. This is life for Silicon Valley's favored teenagers.Seventeen-year-old Theo Baker showed up for freshman year at Stanford University as a tech-obsessed coder. It seemed like paradise. There were Rodin sculptures next to nuclear laboratories and inventors lounging with Olympians. But Baker soon discovered a culture that embraced corner-cutting, that vested infinite excess and access in the hands of kids with few safeguards to catch bad behavior.Stanford, he realized, was less a school than a business. Its annual budget was nearly twice that of Harvard or Yale and higher than those of 116 countries. The product? Students. Especially those special few identified as the next trillion-dollar startup founders. For them, there were secret societies, "pre-idea" funding offers, and social calls from billionaires, all with the expectation that these geniuses would soon join the ruling elite.At the helm of this business was Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a superstar neuroscientist and wealthy biotech executive. But when Baker joined the student newspaper and started poking around the Stanford president's record, he discovered never-reported allegations of research misconduct in studies published across two decades bearing Tessier-Lavigne's name.Only one month into college and thousands of miles from home, Baker began receiving anonymous letters, going on stakeouts, and tracking down confidential sources. High-powered lawyers and public relations teams were hired to attack his reporting. Stanford opened an investigation into its own leader. And by the end of the year, Tessier-Lavigne was out as president.This is the incredible journey of a reluctant teenage reporter who uncovered a story that shook the scientific world and became front-page news across the country. It is also an unprecedented inside view of the students learning to rule the world-and what they're learning from those who already do.How to Rule the World is a shocking, hilarious, and moving debut, showcasing Silicon Valley's training ground as never before.