Finally. The Definitive Story of Facebook.
He has had unprecedented access to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for three years. And now renowned tech writer Steven Levy delivers the definitive history of one of America’s most powerful and controversial companies: Facebook.
On Sale: February 25th
Pre-Order Now
About the Book
In his sophomore year of college, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network. The site caught on like wildfire, and soon students nationwide were on Facebook.
Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from Zuckerberg’s first, modest iteration. It has grown into a tech giant, the largest social media platform and one of the most gargantuan companies in the world, with a valuation of more than $576 billion and almost 3 billion users, including those on its fully owned subsidiaries, Instagram and WhatsApp. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life. And in light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing “fake news” accounts, the handling of its users’ personal data, and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO, never has the company been more central to the national conversation.
Based on hundreds of interviews inside and outside the company, Levy’s sweeping narrative digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.
Praise
“Steven Levy is the founding guru of technology journalism. Few other writers can harness both access to top figures and critical insight informed by decades of reporting on Silicon Valley. His Facebook book will be a blockbuster, a penetrating account of the momentous consequences of a reckless young company with the power to change the world.”—Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts
“The social-media behemoth Facebook comes across as an idealistic but also shady, exploitative, and increasingly beleaguered entity in this clear-eyed history… Levy had extensive access to Facebook employees and paints a revealing and highly critical portrait of the company as it wrangled with charges that it violated users’ privacy by sharing their data with advertisers and political operatives, and served as a vector for manipulative fake news, pro-Trump Russian propaganda, and hate speech.”—Publishers Weekly
“Respected tech writer Levy (In the Plex, 2011) presents the definitive story of Facebook… Given unfettered access to Zuckerberg and the company during the last three years, Levy is able to illustrate how the company developed under the influence of Zuckerberg’s acknowledged hypercompetitiveness… This absorbing book will inspire important conversations about big tech and privacy in the twenty-first century.”—Booklist
“The value of this book lies in its putting together all the pieces of Facebook’s privacy troubles, algorithms, and the Cambridge Analytica affair”—Library Journal
Tour Dates
Tuesday, February 25th
7:00pm
POLITICS AND PROSE BOOKSTORE AT THE WHARF
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Washington, DC 20024-2491
Wednesday, February 26th
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Thursday, February 27th
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Saturday, February 29th
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6420 Montgomery St.
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Monday, March 2nd
7:00 pm
UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE AT UNIVERSITY TEMPLE METHODIST CHURCH
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Tuesday, March 3rd
6:30 pm
THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB
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Wednesday, March 4th
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Friday, March 6th
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Friday, March 13th
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HARVARD BOOK STORE
1256 Massachusetts Ave,
Cambridge, MA 02138-3820
Monday, March 16th
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SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST FEATURED SESSION
Austin, TX
About Steven
Steven Levy is Wired’s editor at large. The Washington Post has called him “America’s premier technology journalist.” His previous positions include founder of Backchannel and chief technology writer and senior editor for Newsweek. Levy has written seven previous books and his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Premiere. Levy has also won several awards during his thirty-plus years of writing about technology, including for his book Hackers, which PC Magazine named the best sci-tech book written in the last twenty years; and for Crypto, which won the grand e-book prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book Fair.
More by Steven
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius
Artificial LIfe: The Quest For a New Creation
Insanely Great: The Story of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything
Crypto: The New Code Wars
The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffled Commerce and Coolness
In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Contact
Publicist: Rebecca Odell: rodell@penguinrandomhouse.com
Agent: Phillipa Brophy, Sterling Lord Literistic, flip@sll.com
To contact Steven, please use the form below.