Investigative reporter and Baffler contributor Pein’s first book should terrify you ... Pein dedicates a good chunk of the book to a small but vocal faction bent on government destruction and dabbling in alt-right politics and even eugenics. Even scarier, they face little resistance from the larger tech world. Like Jon Ronson, Pein combines serious journalism with humor and his own antics for an entertaining and caustic mix. If Silicon Valley and Black Mirror had a book baby, it would be Live Work Work Work Die.

Given Pein’s fluent, entertaining sarcasm, many readers won’t know how seriously to take his self-proclaimed quest to get rich and transform the world. But as he is tepidly welcomed into the first of several deceptively advertised Airbnb rentals by a couple of other recent arrivals from Bangalore and Norway, we’re reminded of how many do buy into the Silicon Valley fantasy ... Laborize is funny, but the last third of Live Work Work Work Die simply frightens. Pein steps away from his experiences among the grubs of the Valley to expose the astonishing views of many of its titans: their flirtation with (or outright embrace of) an updated eugenicist worldview that favors the tech industry’s white and East Asian composition; their intellectual admiration for certain 'neoreactionary' thinkers’ call for the abolition of universities, nonprofits, and the federal government. I won’t name these thinkers, even if the author does; suffice it to say that one recurrent fantasy of Silicon Valley is replacing democracy with a technocracy of its own brightest minds. But in so many ways this has already begun.

Still, despite and perhaps a little because of its lackadaisical approach to its subject, “Live Work Work Work Die” manages to capture something essential about Silicon Valley that has eluded other authors. This is because Pein starts from the grimy underbelly of tech and never makes it out, which accurately reflects the experience of many tech workers. We only learn of those who make it big — Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. We rarely hear of the people who fail, or work uselessly and endlessly hard, without much in the way of reward ... This is an exhausting, one-note book, but the tinny, grating note Pein repeatedly strikes may nonetheless be one the world needs to hear more often ... His failed journey around the depressing periphery of the tech industry, its warrens suffused with the distinct scent of unadulterated bull, is a preview of the bleak, airless future it aims to deliver, by driverless car or drone, to all of us.

... Pein’s new book, Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley, is all the more impressive: Pein, perhaps by virtue of being an outsider, is able to penetrate the techie nest in a way that locals can’t ... Alternately amusing and horrifying, the book’s denouement arrives when Pein ties together the techno-utopian mind-set with a burgeoning 'tech fascist' movement, something that Pein previously detailed in his brilliant Baffler article Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon Reich. Indeed, like any group of supremacists, those who believe that coders are innately superior will eventually find themselves browsing brown T-shirts on Amazon. Here's hoping we can debug the Valley before it's too late.

The Silicon Valley that Pein uncovers is not unlike dystopian visions we are accustomed to seeing in science fiction. Like any of number of fictional futures, from Metropolis to Altered Carbon, it is a society where the wealthy in live in glistening towers in the clouds, surrounded by technologies of luxury and convenience, looking down on an underclass that cannot afford basic necessities. As Pein shows, the world where a handful of billionaires own more wealth than the majority of the world’s population is not just the stuff of fantasy, it’s the world we’re living in ... As Live Work Work Work Die shows, most success stories are not entirely the result of dreams realized in the open market.

As Pein writes, a lot of these startups get funded without anything in the way of an idea or business plan — if you have the marketing savvy, you, too, can get venture capital funding. He doesn’t really explain why, despite that, 95 percent of all startups fail. Or maybe that was just me in my reading, because this is a very dense book. There are actually two or three books waiting to break out of Live Work Work Work Die, so there’s a lot of ground to cover in a scant 300 pages ... Still, I did find Pein’s chapter on tech journalism to be illuminating ... Overall, I was fascinated and creeped out by the book. Pein doesn’t have much that is flattering to say about Silicon Valley or tech in general, so that can also make the book a difficult read. If you’re looking for fair and balanced journalism, you’re not really going to find it here. Instead, this is a screed about a guy (the author) who seems forlorn that his attempts to create a startup for the sole purpose of making a whole lot of money doesn’t go as planned. (Which is really the thrust of this volume.) The book might have been better if Pein was slightly more objective and didn’t institute a slash and burn policy. But maybe Live Work Work Work Die is what it is because it has to be — nobody is keeping tabs on tech generals who are out to supplant presidents and kings. To that end, the book is a must read for any young people interested in working in technology.

Pein’s analysis of this toxic culture culminates in a trip to Holland for a conference on technological singularity, the 'physical and metaphysical merger of humanity and computers' believed by many to be in the near future, which, by this point in the book, will strike many readers as a terrifying prospect. Both entertaining and damning, Pein’s book unmasks the shell game being run by venture capitalists in an industry that is not nearly as benign as it claims to be.

For all the social oddities he observes, cringeworthy encounters he experiences, and wit and outrage he levels at his subjects, Pein’s real achievement is his willingness to find out how Silicon Valley works and not become distracted by all its shiny objects. A clearheaded reckoning with consequences of the tech industry’s disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it.