Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

by John Carreyrou

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword.

“Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. 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 $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.

• ISBN10: 0525431993
• ISBN13: 9780525431992
• Publish Date: 28 January 2020 (first published 21 May 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780525431992

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!