A rigorous, self-assured, propulsive, at times terrifying portrait of a dweebocracy that 'sets the agenda for the planet' ... He...bring[s] a place vividly to life. The best nonfiction doesn’t declaim from oxygen-deprived heights; it ports you into a world and lets the relevance emerge ... The central tension of this book is that Baker sets out both to climb Silicon Valley’s ivory tower and to bring it crashing down ... This dual-track approach would probably discredit an established journalist. For a college freshman who is still figuring himself out, it is understandable — and makes him harder to dismiss. Baker still admires much of the tech world. He still believes it does good and wants its approval. But he confronts his dreamland and concludes, painfully, that it is rotten, indifferent, built on lies, craving power for its own sake.
The kid’s got a story to tell, about how a cub reporter felled a titan of science and higher ed, all while doing normal undergrad things like hallucinating his way through a term paper, (theoretically) going to class and breaking up with his high school girlfriend ... Paints a Hollywood-ready, more-absurd-than-parody Stanford where the lawn fountains might as well be filled with $100 bills ... He also often characterizes himself as the sole principled one ... It’s hard to pen scenes like these without looking self-justifying. As excellent a journalist as Baker turns out to be, he’s less successful as a memoirist, whose task isn’t to build a case but to tug the strings of the self’s knot. With more maturity, the current college senior might have more self-awareness of how such lines come off ... For now, though, what a journalist. If Baker’s portrait of Stanford could be its own movie...is gripping account of how a tip turned into a history-making investigation has the makings of All the President’s Men.
An account of his George Polk Award-winning investigation into former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s research misconduct, an ethnographic study of the campus’s social 'underbelly,' and a personal memoir. It largely succeeds at all three purposes. But Baker’s disdain for his subjects is, too often, an obstacle to understanding them ... On Baker’s account, misconduct in students’ economic and academic lives—cheating and plagiarism are rampant, he reports—flows from a culture of impunity that has long pervaded the university’s upper ranks ... It’s a persuasive argument, and How To Rule the World makes it with considerable pathos and wit. But Baker is not above a little overclaiming of his own ... Baker has a good sense of humor. But his impulse to play those around him for comedic effect weakens his analysis of Silicon Valley’s politics, too: his subjects become strawmen.
It’s enough to make your average embittered hack (me) feel queasy ... Baker’s book is a thrilling story of journalistic investigation: effectively, it’s All the President’s Men as a campus novel.
Baker isn’t always discerning about the anecdotes he shares; some, foregrounding his moral compass, read like self-flattery. His pedestrian account of trying to preserve a long-distance relationship with his high-school girlfriend doesn’t add much either. In this absorbing memoir, a college journalist reveals how his scoops brought down his august school’s leader.
