The Contrarian

May 1, 2021

Features editor and a tech reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek, Chafkin tells the story of The Contrarian, that is, billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who has significantly influenced the course of Silicon Valley. Columbia history/journalism professor Cobb and New Yorker editor Remnick illuminate The Matter of Black Lives in pieces collected from the magazine, starting with Rebecca West's account of a lynching trial and James Baldwin's "Letter from a Region in My Mind" and moving on to embrace works by Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zadie Smith, Hilton Als, Jamaica Kincaid, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., among others (100,000-copy first printing). Having left behind her hometown in England's declining coal-mining region when her father declared There's Nothing for You Here, Brookings senior fellow Hill--now an American citizen and a former member of the National Security Council--draws on her extensive national intelligence work in Russia to warn that America's rocky situation today mirrors circumstances that led to Russia's socioeconomic decline (100,000-copy first printing). Rejecting the view that humans are irredeemably off-the-wall in their thinking (we have elucidated the laws of nature, for instance), two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Pinker argues in Rationality that we don't avail ourselves of logic in many everyday situations because we don't really need to. But we can learn how to think more logically, even as we recognize that some rational acts (he cites self-interest) can lead to damaging irrationality for society. Oxford professor Srinivasan's The Right to Sex talks about talking about sex in the #MeToo era, stating, for instance, that we need to deepen the prevailing concept of consent into something more nuanced (50,000-copy first printing). Award-winning journalist Streep's Brothers on Three revisit the players, families, and community that celebrated when the Arlee Warriors brought home the high school basketball state championship title to the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana (75,000-copy first printing).

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July 19, 2021
A Big Tech billionaire has injected toxic Trumpism and other extreme ideals into America’s body politic, according to this cutting biography. Bloomberg journalist Chafkin (Design Crazy) depicts Peter Thiel, PayPal cofounder and Facebook financier, as an inconsistent “calculating operator” with an enormous political and social footprint. Many of his impulses inhabit the fringe, Chafkin notes, including his support for “seasteading” countries on ocean platforms and his interest in life-extending blood transfusions from young people. But Thiel is also a force in mainstream Republican politics; he was a big donor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and then won federal contracts for his data-mining company, Palantir, which helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement find immigration-law violators. Chafkin’s portrait of Thiel is punchy and caustic, asking, “Was Thiel a genius worthy of admiration and study, or a sociopathic nihilist?” (the author leans toward the latter). His zeal to unmask Thiel’s allegedly subversive influence is sometimes overwrought: he calls Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 refusal to censor Trump’s campaign claims “exactly what Thiel, and Trump, wanted,” while downplaying the free-speech issues involved. Still, this is an engrossing look at one of Silicon Valley’s most eccentric and abrasive figures. Agent: Ethan Bassoff, Ross Yoon Agency.

August 1, 2021
A revealing portrait of the man "responsible for creating the ideology that has come to define Silicon Valley: that technological progress should be pursued relentlessly--with little, if any, regard for potential costs or dangers to society." Chafkin, a features editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, brings long experience in the tech world to his book debut, a savvy biography of billionaire venture capitalist and outspoken neo-reactionary Peter Thiel (b. 1967). Touting a brand of extreme libertarianism, Thiel has created Silicon Valley's defining ideology of tech above all else. An arrogant, aloof, high-achieving student at Stanford, Thiel came to see the university's multicultural liberalism "as uniquely despicable, maybe even dangerous." After graduating from law school, he worked briefly in corporate law and, in the 1990s, arrived in Silicon Valley, intent on making money. Chafkin recounts Thiel's rise as a business mogul, surrounded by young men who "recognized him as the leader and would not fight with him." But wealth was only one goal. Thiel also sought to establish himself as a ruthless power broker in Silicon Valley and to wield influence as a conservative thought leader in Washington, D.C. Among his many business projects, Chafkin recounts his involvement in PayPal, which he saw as a way to strip government from control of its own money; Facebook (at one point, Mark Zuckerberg was the "ultimate Thiel acolyte"); Palantir, a surveillance company whose customers include the Army, Navy, and CIA; and his latest interest: funding research that would allow humans to live forever. A major backer of Trump, he served as a "shadow president" on Trump's transition team, agitating for "maximal disruption within the White House." Drawing on interviews with Thiel and more than 150 others, many who insisted on anonymity because they feared Thiel's retribution, Chafkin deftly portrays his subject as a "calculating operator," "nihilist," and predator who has constructed an image "so compelling that it has come to obscure the man behind it." A brisk, well-researched life of an enigmatic billionaire.

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July 23, 2021

Peter Thiel might be the most influential Silicon Valley entrepreneur of the last 20 years, writes Bloomberg tech reporter Chafkin. The author spent 15 years covering the technology beat where he discovered much information about the elusive and enigmatic Thiel, an arch-conservative billionaire who was an early supporter of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the alt-right. Chafkin reveals aspects of Thiel's life, from his college and law school days at Stanford, through his time as Trump's chief technology advisor in 2017. He depicts Thiel as a ruthless CEO who amassed fortunes from his investments in lucrative companies--notably PayPal, where he won control from Elon Musk; and Facebook, where he manipulated Mark Zuckerberg into an uneasy d�tente that made Facebook amenable to Trump's campaign. Chafkin assesses Thiel as a powerful and dangerous venture capitalist who believes that technology shouldn't be impeded by employees or society. VERDICT This account lucidly illustrates Thiel's rise as a right-wing power broker, during the hi-tech boom, bust, and resurgence; it will appeal to readers fascinated by the intersection of technology and politics. See Kurt Andersen's Evil Geniuses for a narrative of how the United States aided the rise of the ruling billionaire class.--Karl Helicher, formerly at Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

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