Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

by John Carreyrou

The shocking true story behind The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews and Stephen Fry

'I couldn’t put down this thriller . . . the perfect book to read by the fire this winter.' – Bill Gates

Winner of the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2018

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.

In Bad Blood, John Carreyrou tells the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

'Chilling . . . Reads like a West Coast version of All the President’s Men.' – New York Times Book Review

• ISBN10: 1509868089
• ISBN13: 9781509868087
• Publish Date: 21 March 2019 (first published 21 May 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Picador
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[pamela]

Bad Blood is a wild ride, from start to finish. It reads like a thriller, and feels like you're watching a runaway freight train.

The Theranos story is one I've been following closely. Through podcasts, Carreyrou's original articles, and even television adaptations, it's a story with so many angles. Elizabeth Holmes offers a masterclass in control and manipulation.

John Carreyrou is a master of pacing. There's not a single boring moment in Bad Blood. He also makes the information accessible for the layperson — no mean feat when you consider how much medical, chemistry, and economic knowledge should have been required to follow a story like this.

Bad Blood is investigative journalism done right. It's well presented, entertaining, and fully fact-checked. Not once did I feel that Carreyrou was reaching in his conclusions. This is probably one of my top non-fiction recommends of the decade.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

This is not normally something I would read, but it was pick for a book club book and I thought I would give it a change. This book haunts me MONTHS after reading it. I still can't believe the things Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos got away with and who they swindled.

[kiracanread]

For a non-fiction, this story was truly addictive, I'd never heard about the context for this book before, the silicon valley start up 'Theranos' or it's CEO 'Elizabeth Holmes' and this book had me so intrigued I just couldn't put it down, I needed to know what happened to this company so badly I was so invested.

[thebookdisciple]

Such a fascinating story about a woman's sheer narcissism! To understand how LONG this ruse went on was appalling and to think of how many people could have been tragically impacted. A must read!

Great narrator too!