Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

I recommend to anyone who would like to know about the tech world, but especially anyone who's had a career in tech for the last 30 years. That is me. I worked in this tech world for the last 30 years (recently retired) and I liked the stories in the book and was able to visualize it due to personal experiences in the space. I have recommended it to several in my network as a good read.

I didn’t know anything about Kara Swisher before reading this book but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a nostalgic romp through the rise of the dot.coms and the outsized personalities behind them. I really didn’t learn much new, aside from Swisher’s witty and entertaining takes on the people, the parties, the interviews, conversations, and all the e-mails. She is talented and intelligent and quickly established herself as a leader in the male-dominated world of tech journalism. She holds back no punches when it comes to some of the tech and news titans of the day. She takes an introspective look at her own career path relative to what went on during the dot.com boom. Despite her decision to stick to ethical principles, I have to wonder if she misses the excitement of the day and regrets passing on any of those job offers she mentioned having received.

Very interesting and insightful perspectives regarding computer technology, their creators and development of the internet. As told by a superbly competent investigative journalist who witnessed this history being made ... and of whom we have far too few in the world today. Enjoyable read!

I had never heard of Kara Swisher before I read this book, but from the bottom of my heart I tell her, thank you. I am 85 years old, and I have been a fan of technology since before it was called that. The year that The World Wide Web, was conceived, 1962, I was in the jungles of Viet Nam, far away from technology living with an indigenous people. In 1995 my wife and I bought our first computer. We do art and craft shows and design our own marketing and POP materials. That winter just before Christmas, we were doing a Christmas show in a mall in San Antonio, TX. An older gentleman approached me and called me aside and said Sir, there is something happening that is the new face of business, it is called the World Wide Web, and I think your business would work really well on it. Go find out about it. So we did, and my wife went and took a crash course in HTML and in April of 1996 our website went live along with the less than a million live at the time, probably less than a quarter of a million actually. Orders started pouring in, and they still are 28 years later. I didn't know who all these people were that were responsible for all this magic, but it didn't matter, it worked, and it changed my life and my wife's life, and started us on a path we could not have previously imagined. Listening to Kara tell her story about her journey and about all those men boys that shaped the digital age, was very stimulating and interesting, I loved it and the way it was presented. So read her book, it is a treasure, and I thank you Kara Swisher, great job.

I have admired the author’s writing throughout the past 25 years and thought this book was great until three quarters of the way through it. In the beginning and majority of the book Swisher dishes the dirt on technology billionaires with a great writing style. After awhile it gets bogged down with too much negativity on Silicon Valley’s leadership. Plus, and I know that the book is part autobiographical, she spends too much time on her personal life. I would have liked her to elaborate more on the “good guys “ in tech such as Mark Cuban to name one. The other thing that left me flat was not going out on a limb enough on where the industry is going. I was disappointed at the end of it.

Great experience and great writing from one who I've observed for several decades.Yet, having been involved with electronics technology since the 1950s, it seems to me that the book is an absolutely revealing insider's access to tech at the 35,000 foot level.It doesn't get to the stratospheric and strategic level of an SR-71, imho.By which I mean to go before J.C.R. Licklider as the initiator of DARPA and the concepts of an internet and web, to reach further back into the beginnings of "systems thinking" with the cybernetics approach of Norman Wiener of MIT, as well as those involved with the Manhattan Project in WW2.And even before that, to the connections of construction engineer Herbert Hoover to Stanford University, which of course, was founded by Central and Southern Pacific Railroad investor, Leland Stanford, following the California Gold Rush era.So the larger and essential message is that a "system", such as "Silicon Valley" as a technology generator, breaks down into four essential parts: input, process, output, and feedback.In that sense, my preferred model of a systems approach is the 'OODA Loop' of John Boyd, of which Swisher appears to be stuck in the "Orient" mode, although she has many great suggestions for our activities along the way and beyond.Great work. Learned a lot. Thanks.

I'm not a tech person, so I wasn't aware of Kara Swisher until I started listening to the podcast Pivot, which she co-hosts. Pivot is one of my 2 favorite podcasts, and Burn Book is just as delightful to read as the podcast. One learns from the author's description of her career that she's done exactly what she felt was right every step of the way, and it's served her well. Ms. Swisher fell in love with the internet at its early stages, and she's used that passion to identify the most important developments and leaders in the industry, whom she covers in sequence in this book. I enjoyed learning more about Steve Jobs, Walt Mossberg, Susan Wojcicki, and many others that Ms. Swisher has spoken or worked with extensively over the years. I can't say I enjoyed the reading about the behavior of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg in her book, but it's important to learn that stuff too. As an economist, I would say that Burn Book and Pivot are complements--they don't work as substitutes.

Love the stories, highly enjoyable and she does not hold back. A great historical work that explains why we are where we are

Facts speaks thousand words .Book is well written and captures the reality of tech industry about the pros and cons

Mordaz, cáustico, muy ameno, me ha gustado

For an author who has ostensibly established a reputation as a fearsome writer, I found her treatment of some selfish, greedy tech entrepreneurs pretty mild. Pretty thorough coverage otherwise.

"Burn Book" by Kara Swisher is energetic, opinionated, and places people and some big personalities at the heart of the tech story. But by the time I finished the book, what I really felt it to be was a critical but loving eulogy for the pre-AI internet era. New opportunities and dangers await.