PositiveThe Star TribuneRid, who testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2017 on disinformation operations, recounts elaborate and sometimes shocking tactics used to disinform democratic societies and inflame passions ... Active Measures has much to say about the shadowy internet influence campaigns that followed the rise of Vladimir Putin from KGB intelligence officer to Russian president, though attributing the source of internet activity is always tricky. Ultimately, Rid concludes that Russian and Russia-linked efforts to fill the internet with disinformation most likely did not cause many people to change their minds in 2016.
Mike Magee
PositiveThe Star Tribune...Mike Magee dredges up...many [anecdotes] to show readers that the present dysfunction in U.S. health care is not an aberration, but a persistent feature of a system ruled by self-interested institutions ... The book exposes how doctors, drug companies, hospitals, pharmacies, insurers, lawmakers and special interests have colluded over the years to protect their own turf and profits, despite relentless public demand for a system that serves patients instead of entrepreneurs ... Magee’s insight is based on his deep personal experience with the health care industry ... Hospitals don’t take as critical a lashing as other players in the book, but the material that is included is strong. Magee’s insider recounting of the \'Philadelphia hospital wars\' of the 1990s offers a juicy account of being pursued by an unwanted buyer ... the material on Big Pharma is where the book cuts deepest.
John Carreyrou
PositiveThe Star TribuneTheranos’ blood-testing device ... would eliminate thousands of deaths from adverse drug reactions, identifying diseases early, and run any blood test for less than half the normal cost, potential customers were told. The problem was, Theranos had no such device ... Now Carreyrou is out with a book-length exposé, Bad Blood, which uses interviews with more than 150 people to show how Holmes briefly became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Holmes is depicted as a kind of social hacker loose in Silicon Valley, hoodwinking potential partners while intimidating her critics ... It’s not hard to imagine further enforcement actions flowing from Bad Blood ...The book exposes a host of Theranos lies.
