Bad Blood
Now featuring a new afterword that covers the lengthy, high-profile trials of Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani, this book arrives with serious credentials. Bill Gates called it unputdownable, and the Financial Times and McKinsey named it their Business Book of the Year for 2018. It's not hard to see why. Carreyrou tells the true story of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech firm that promised to change blood testing forever, and then spectacularly fell apart. Elizabeth Holmes, its founder and chief executive, was once celebrated as a female Steve Jobs. A Stanford dropout with a magnetic presence, she attracted heavyweight backers including Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, and steered the company to a valuation north of nine billion dollars. Her personal fortune was estimated at nearly five billion. There was, however, a rather significant catch: the technology at the heart of it all simply did not function. Carreyrou, the prize-winning journalist who first exposed the deception and refused to drop it despite fierce legal threats and pressure from Holmes herself, reconstructs the whole staggering affair with the pace of a thriller. Ambition, self-delusion, and Silicon Valley bravado collide in what amounts to the largest corporate fraud since Enron. The New York Times compared it to a West Coast All the President's Men, and that comparison feels entirely earned. Gripping, unsettling, and frequently jaw-dropping, this is narrative journalism working at its sharpest.
- Author: John Carreyrou
- Publisher: Picador
- Genre: Industry-Specific Business
- ISBN: 978-1035034970
- Pages: 400 pages