{ "item_title" : "How to Rule the World", "item_author" : [" Theo Baker "], "item_description" : "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 Leibovich, #1 New York Times bestselling author of This TownWinner of the George Polk Award for his investigation that brought down Stanford's president, Theo Baker offers 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.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/383/283/0593832833_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "32.00", "online_price" : "28.42", "our_price" : "28.42", "club_price" : "28.42", "savings_pct" : "11", "savings_amt" : "3.58", "club_savings_pct" : "11", "club_savings_amt" : "3.58", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "32.00" } }

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