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. To understand “Meta,” you must read Facebook.

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 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—now called Meta-- 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 over 3 billion users, including those on its fully owned subsidiaries, Instagram and WhatsApp. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook and its sister apps 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.

Facebook: The Inside Story is the definitive book on this wildly successful and deeply troubled firm. Based on hundreds of interviews inside and outside the company—including seven interviews with Zuckerberg himself—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

“Levy is the dean of tech writers; Facebook’s brass gave him the run of the C-suite. The result is evenhanded and devastating.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“[An] exhaustive and well paced history… Levy’s account of Zuckerberg’s abbreviated Harvard tenure and Facebook’s early years feel fresh, with plenty of color that reminds you the HBO show Silicon Valley did not have to reach far for its satire”—NPR

“[T]he best tech book I’ve read in years. If you want to fully understand Facebook, or just how a modern startup works or how a modern tech behemoth functions and sees itself in the world, I cannot recommend this book more highly.”—Brian McCullough, Techmeme Ride Home

“Facebook: The Inside Story is, by my estimation, the definitive accounting of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. It’s a tale of genius, disregard, innovation, and stunning success and betrayal. ”—Lance Ulanoff, Lifewire.

“If you want to know why Facebook is the way it is — how its leaders think, what their blind spots are, and why the company’s plans have so often gone awry — The Inside Story is an excellent starting place…I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a comprehensive, reality-based account of the company’s first 16 years”—Casey Newton, The Verge

About Steven

Steven Levy is Wired’s editor at large. The Washington Post has called him “America’s premier technology journalist.”

For almost four decades Levy has chronicled the digital revolution, its impact on humanity, and the people behind it. He has written the foundational work on computer culture (Hackers, 1984) and with Crypto (2001) the indispensible book on story behind that groundbreaking technology—years before people began gushing about Bitcoin and the blockchain. He has written the definitive books on Facebook, Google, the Macintosh, and the iPod. World-class engineers tell him that they pursued AI after reading his 1992 book Artificial Life. And he currently covers the breadth of tech stories—the good and the disturbing—for WIRED, where he has been a contributor since its inception.

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