Kara Swisher has lost her patience. The self-described “liberal, lesbian Donald Trump of San Francisco” has been arguably the foremost tech journalist of the past three decades but has gradually shifted into an activist role due to her dismay with the people she once covered so closely. This past February, she published a memoir titled “Burn Book.”
A memoir may seem an odd choice for her to write at this point in her life. Her career seems far from over as her activist turn and the 2015 launch of her “Recode Decode” podcast have indicated. So why write a memoir that will so soon be out of date? Because this isn’t the story of Swisher but — as the book’s subtitle says — “a tech love story.”
Swisher’s choice to write a memoir ultimately provides a uniquely personal perspective on the problems she describes within the tech industry. Scathing takedowns of tech bros are a dime a dozen these days, but they are almost always impersonal. For example, the journalists, politicians and pundits who often provide insight and commentary haven’t seen firsthand the profoundly weird party that Google co-founder Sergey Brin hosted, where everyone was invited to dress like a baby. Not only do people not have Swisher’s level of access, but they also don’t have the anger of someone who has spent three decades around these morons.
Only a memoir could be this pointedly spiteful.
The best summary I could hope to provide of this premise is in the opening of the book’s first chapter:
“I know you came here for stories about the tech billionaires like Elon [Musk] and Mark [Zuckerberg] and Sheryl [Sandberg] and Peter [Thiel] and Jeff [Bezos] and Steve [Jobs] and Tim [Cook]. Don't worry–you’ll get to meet all of them, as I did over my three-decade career covering these moguls. But this is a book about me and tech, a relationship that started as a meet-cute love story and then turned sour over time.”
And she is certainly able to indulge the audience’s appetite for lurid stories of tech bros. The lurid stories she tells about Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and many others, along with venting her distaste of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whom she lovingly refers to as “Uncle Satan,” are not only quite satisfying to see written but also deeply personal.
One of the most entertaining yet dismaying examples is the deterioration of her relationship with Musk, which ultimately culminated in an email written to her by Musk with the subject line, “You’re An Asshole.” The two of them used to be quite close, but the pressures of wealth and fame made Musk progressively more immature and paranoid. Swisher’s attempts to maintain contact with him were all interpreted as attacks by an uncooperative troll whose mismanagement of X, formerly known as Twitter, saw racial slurs appear on the trending page.
Throughout the memoir, she anchors her comments and reflections about tech bros on Jobs, whom she once knew quite well. She spends much of the book lauding praise on the man, framing him as something almost nobody left in the tech industry is: responsible.
Jobs’ fixations on quality design and privacy, as well as a lack of fragility to his ego that made him capable of personal growth in some capacity, aren’t exactly something that Meta’s board of directors has, and Swisher emphasizes this fact heavily.
Her memoir is the funniest piece of non-fiction writing I have ever read. The “praise for Kara Swisher” quotes on the book jacket and first few pages are largely a series of insults directed at her from tech bros. She also refuses to add any footnotes in her book because, as she says, “I’m not Bob Woodward.” On almost every page, there is a pointed and petty insult to some of the most powerful men on earth.
This memoir is one of the few things I’ve read in my life where I could feel how much fun the author had writing it. For most of us who are so enraged by the state of tech, our grievances are political. But for Kara Swisher, they’re personal.
It should be noted that the book does not have an index, and Swisher left a note explaining why, saying, “You have to read the whole book all the way through to see if you’re in it.” While I appreciated the joke, I am quite disappointed by the lack of an index as someone who will, without a doubt, be referring to this book again. My only other complaint is that Swisher teased some Peter Thiel chicanery in the opening of the book that the book ultimately did not deliver on.
Despite these complaints, though, I cannot recommend this book enough. It is a rather quick read and a very fun one at that. Few things that can get you so well up-to-date on arguably the most pressing issues of our day are also very entertaining.
