I'm a sucker for a terrific historical book especially when the author weaves together threads I never knew were meant to be woven together. I wanted to read this book because I've long felt that Silicon Valley and its environs is toxic. But I never knew how many vast and disparate reasons there would be for its toxicity. And reading this book I got so much more - it's a well crafted, well written tome about a neighborhood that for better or for worse has a tremendous bearing on the rest of the world. Also this book isn't just a history - it's a wonderfully interdisciplinary book that covers economics, politics, anthropology, and a bit of literature and film to spice things up. It takes readers from the federal government led genocide of the northern California tribes; to the eugenics movement that gave Stanford University it's initial footing in academia; to the creation of the suburb Palo Alto, which Leland Stanford created in America's first iteration of white flight; to the role Herbert Hoover played in the town, Stanford, and laying the foundational political ideologies in the twentieth century; to the technology sector's foundation through to its present as inextricably linked to the military/security industrial complex. And SO much more. Understanding the role that Stanford and Silicon Valley play in the global economy is especially enlightening particularly the way Harris is able to connect the spate of suicides in Palo Alto high schools with suicides at China's Foxcon by young people creating Apple products. Likewise, Harris is able to tie American interference in Latin America, the Iran Contra affair, the proliferation of illicit drugs in the decades long project of segregating East Palo Alto from the affluent side of town. And just like the drug cartels, he illustrates how Silicon Valley has been and is a cesspool of corruption.