Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (617)

Content

Erika (17788 KP) rated Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup in Books

Feb 14, 2021

This excellent non-fiction book is about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos. This company was touting that it could run 100s of tests on just a drop of blood. If you know ANYTHING about laboratory tests, or watched CSI and was exposed to GC/MS, you would know it is completely impossible to do tests off of a finger puncture.
Holmes is described as brilliant, and was the darling of Silicon Valley. Yes, she was brilliant, a brilliant dirtbag. Everyone was fooled by her initially (some still are), to include the author of this book, John Carreyrou, who initially wrote a glowing article about her.
However, it was all fake, as proven by various whistleblowers. This was such a good read, and pairs really well with the HBO documentary movie, The Inventor. I highly recommend this book if you like books written by journalists, the downfall of dirtbags, and stories about fraud.

Kudos

Janeeny (200 KP) rated The Black Death in Books

Sep 13, 2019

This was actually my reading roulette for July, but I was a bit behind on Julys books so it got bumped to Augusts reads.

I bought this book when it was first released as it interested me, gradually my interest waned and it’s now been sitting on my shelf for seven years.

The Black Death is a non-fiction account of a little village in Suffolk during the plague years. Each chapter starts with a factual account of what was going on in the rest of the world regarding the spread of the disease then it launches into the story of this little village.

Hatcher has taken factual records and accounts and added a little poetic licence to create an engaging story that really involves you in the day to day life. He does take great pains to reiterate how poor the records were for that time and how much of a liberty he was taking, but I feel it’s unnecessary.