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“Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 21, 2018 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780525642855
- File size: 334506 KB
- Duration: 11:36:53
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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WALL STREET JOURNAL investigative journalist Carreyrou presents meticulously researched, clearly written evidence of the fraud perpetrated by business wunderkind Elizabeth Holmes. The former CEO of the once-renowned Silicon Valley startup Theranos bilked investors of millions and potentially risked the lives of patients around the world with a groundbreaking diagnostic product that did not work reliably. Will Damron is the perfect choice as narrator. His precisely articulated style makes the entire effort sound as if it is a cloak-and-dagger spy novel. The author used many brave whistle-blowers who were a part of Theranos for his research. This is an eye-opening and chilling portrait of outright lies and duplicitous actions arising from blind ambition. Holmes is now looking at possible prison time. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from May 14, 2018
An apparent scientific breakthrough rests on a quicksand of deception in this riveting account of the rise and downfall of notorious biotech firm Theranos. Expanding on his award-winning investigative scoops, Pulitzer-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Carreyrou recounts how Elizabeth Holmes, a charismatic Stanford dropout, started Theranos with claims of a revolutionary blood-testing technology that needed just a few drops from a finger-prick rather than tubefulls drawn from veins with needles. Her start-up became the toast of Silicon Valley, with a $9 billion valuation and a board including former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. The reality, he reports, was less stellar: the company’s flawed tests did not meet regulatory standards and gave dangerously inaccurate results, investors and journalists were snowed with fake demos, and Holmes and her second-in-command (and boyfriend), Sunny Balwani, dismissed employees’ concerns and drove many out with verbal abuse and computer surveillance. The author’s investigation is part of the story: as he pursues the truth, Theranos’s attorneys, led by Bush v. Gore lawyer David Boies, intimidate his sources with lawsuit threats. In the end it is Holmes who is targeted with a lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission for “an elaborate, years-long fraud” and forced to relinquish voting control over the company and pay a six-figure penalty. Carreyrou blends lucid descriptions of Theranos’s technology and its failures with a vivid portrait of its toxic culture and its supporters’ delusional boosterism. The result is a bracing cautionary tale about visionary entrepreneurship gone very wrong. Agent: Eric Lupfer, Fletcher & Company.
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