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OrigamiCatJune 17, 2024

It's a good read. Anyone who has followed tech media knows Swisher's long been one of the best straight-shooter tech journalists. An early insider, she's fair minded, breaks stories right and left, is not mean spirited but one of the sharpest "take no prisoners" thinkers. BB is basically her autobiography with an emphasis on how she first came to cover DC/NoVa tech for WaPo back in the late 1980s/early 1990s when everyone else dismissed tech as a who cares fad, while she covered it as a business story. Her academic and professional cred is impeccable as if she was destined to cover that industry; right time, right place, right person. The book is worth it as a trip down memory lane for techie Gen X/Boomers as well as for youngers on how digital so easily came to own the universe - and Congress - in only a decade or so. Bonus, she names names; can afford to at her all but untouchable professional level. Her reveal on insider corporate tech and media is spot on.

ActualWendyJune 22, 2024

I like Kara Swisher, mostly. I’ve valued her journalism for most of our lives. Thanks for posting this, I forgot about it soon after it came out.

During her publicity, I learned that she comes from a wealthy family. This is one of the reasons why she has been an independent writer, naming names. She also hasn’t made billions off the technical secrets she knew about. A woman with her own money doesn’t need to get a real job. Other women of her generation might have been able to do similarly confrontational journalism, but the magazine they wrote for failed, so they had to work in marketing / pr / customer service / hr in the same industry they had been investigating. A lot of my writer friends ended up like that.

I’m glad Kara made it. She believes that kids can be trans though, alas.