.com Review
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An Best Book of January 2020: (
//www..com/b/?node=17143709011 ) In her mid-twenties, Anna Wiener
left her low-paying but rewarding-ish job in New York publishing
and sold her soul to Silicon Valley start-up culture. First she
dipped her toe in by taking a job at a books-focused tech
company, but soon she made the full plunge, moving West and
joining a data analytics company as an early employee. In her
debut memoir, Wiener relays firsthand the juxtaposition of the
extreme wealth and poverty of San Francisco, most memorably with
an anecdote about a homeless man wearing the sweatshirt swag from
her company. Her colleague’s response? “I wonder whose it was.
We’re not supposed to give away the hoodies.” Wiener is not here
to make friends, as she gets pretty dish-y on the highs and lows
of tech culture. We see young tech entrepreneurs with low EQ
struggle to run a sustainable business, and highly paid boys and
girls acting badly in and around the Bay Area. Wiener’s
observations and writing are razor sharp; she cleverly doesn’t
name any companies (Google is the “search-engine giant down in
ain View”, Uber “an on-demand ride-sharing startup”), but
they are easily recognizable and make the reader feel clever when
they uncrack her code. This perfectly named memoir places Wiener
on the as an astute documenter of our time. She’s now married
her worlds and is writing about Silicon Valley, startup culture
and tech for national publications. —Sarah Gelman, Book Review
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Review
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"Extraordinary . . . Wiener’s storytelling mode is keen and dry,
her sentences spare―perfectly suited to let a steady thrum of
dread emerge." --Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
"[Wiener] is here to fill out our worst-case scenarios with
shrewd in and literary detail . . . Wiener is a droll yet
gentle guide . . . The real strength of Uncanny Valley comes from
her careful parsing of the complex motivations and implications
that fortify this new surreality at every level, from the
individual body to the body politic." --Lauren Oyler, The New
York Times Book Review (cover review)
"Biting and funny . . . Uncanny Valley will speak to you as well
as any book about millennial culture. Its humor is a proxy for
the despair Wiener feels about tech culture’s predicament and her
helplessness at doing anything about it . . .Uncanny Valley ought
to be read by policymakers just as closely as any set of
statistics. Technology is too often an attempt to attack and
exploit our humane instincts; it takes a humane book like this
one to drive that point home." --Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles
Times
"[Wiener] was seen as dispensable; her memoir is anything but. If
Silicon Valley had seen her potential, she would not have become
one of the finest, most assured writers about the internet today.
I read it in one sitting, overcome with the eerie sensation that
my own life was being explained to me . . . The seductiveness of
Wiener’s writing is the feeling that we’re as smart as she is.
This book is proof enough that we are not. But it taps into our
lived experience . . . Reading the book is like having [Wiener's]
awakening in real time." --Kaitlin Phillips, Bookforum
"[An] excellent memoir . . . what makes Uncanny Valley so
valuable is the way it humanizes the tech industry without
letting it off the hook. The book allows us to see the way that
flawed technology is made and marketed." --Charlie Warzel, The
New York Times Privacy Project
"Uncanny Valley is a different sort of Silicon Valley narrative,
a literary-minded outsider’s insider account of an insulated
world that isn’t as insular or distinctive as it and we assume .
. . Through [Wiener's] story, we begin to perceive how much tech
owes its power, and the problems that come with it, to contented
ignorance." --Ismail Muhammad, The Atlantic
"Wiener has the two talents that every memoir needs: A
devastating eye for detail . . . and the ability to her
experience onto a cultural shift much larger than herself . . . I
deadened my phone and laptop while reading this so I could give
it my Undivided Attention. I’m recommending not only the book but
also this reading method." --Molly Young, Vulture
"Hyper-self-aware . . . Wiener’s book transcends the model of a
tech-work memoir . . .Throughout the memoir, Wiener sustains a
piercing tone of crisp, arch observation. It’s revelatory to see
her navigate the subjects one generally reads about in newspaper
headlines, about sexism at Google or the unregulated forums
behind events such as Pizzagate . . . The underlying success of
the memoir is Wiener emerging as a writer informed by her
years-long employment. I’m glad a lover of literary fiction
unleashed herself from customer success management to reporting
on technology." --Antonia Hitchens, San Francisco Chronicle
"Equal parts enchanting and subversive . . . [Wiener's] account
of living inside the Bay Area bubble reads like HBO's Silicon
Valley filtered through Renata Adler; Wiener is a trenchant
cultural cartographer, ping out a foggy world whose ruling
class is fueled by empty scripts: 'People were saying nothing,
and saying it all the tine.' The book's author does the very
site." --Lauren Mechling, Vogue
"Beautifully observed . . . Someone like Wiener makes for a good
in the house of tech . . . Wiener excels at . . . the texture
of life for people in a particular and pivotal time and place."
--Laura Miller, Slate
"An achingly relatable and sharply focused firsthand account . .
.the literary texture of Wiener’s narrative makes it particularly
valuable as a primary document of this moment. Her voice,
alternating between cool and detached and impassioned and
earnest, boasts an observational precision that is devastating.
It is whip smart and searingly funny, too . . . a feat." --Kevin
Lozano, The Nation
"[A] hyper-detailed, thoroughly engrossing memoir . . . At the
intersection of exploitative labor, entitled men, and ungodly
as of money, Wiener bears witness to the fearsome future as
it unfolds." --Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"Absorbing, unsettling, gimlet-eyed." --Laura Collins-Hughes,
Boston Globe
"Incisive . . . inherently timely, [Uncanny Valley] s for
timelessness and achieves it. Its style is of a part with the
dry, affectless writing of the period that Wiener seeks to
capture but goes beyond the Sally Rooney-Tao Lin axis to deliver
something sharper and more complete . . . I tore through Uncanny
Valley, riveted by the wit and precision of Wiener’s
observations." --Jennifer Schaffer, The Baffler
"The quality of Weiner’s on-the-ground observations, coupled with
acuity she brings to understanding the psychology at work, makes
the book illuminating on a page-by-page basis . . . [Wiener's]
empathy makes the portrait all the more damning . . . Weiner’s
book isn’t a warning so much as a lament over the damage done and
the damage still to come." --John Warner, Chicago Tribune
"Wiener shines when she turns her incisive observations on the
many entitled men running amok in Silicon Valley ... an engaging
summary of every terrible thing you’ve heard about start-ups."
--Ines Bellina, The A.V. Club
"Eschewing the caffeinated, self-referential keenness that
defined the decade’s online writing, Wiener is cerebral and
diagnostic in her observance of escalating corporate
surveillance." --Pete Tosiello, The Paris Review
"A neat time lapse of the past seven years in Silicon Valley ...
The author is a gifted writer and presents a clear-eyed account
of her own limitations as a tech employee while offering cultural
analysis of the sector . . . Uncanny Valley is an artful
contribution to the war on tech exceptionalism." --Elaine Moore,
Financial Times
"[Wiener] carefully, wryly observes everyday life in the Valley .
. . a beautifully relatable and tender account." --Angela Saini,
The Observer (London)
"A thought-provoking, personal, and often surprisingly poetic
critique of the far-reaching influence of the tech world . . .
Wiener’s narrative is by turns funny, informative, and a perfect
time of a rapidly changing city." --Royal Young,
Interview
"Nothing short of crucial, a memoir that has crystalized the
essential ingredients of what made the digital economy what it
is." --Michael Seidlinger, GARAGE
"Weiner’s book feels destined to be a key and lasting portrait of
a crucial moment in our relationship with tech culture: a perfect
blend of humor, shrewd in, and earnestness." --Stephen
Sparks, Lit Hub
"Equal parts bildungsroman and insider report, this book reveals
not just excesses of the tech-startup landscape, but also the
Faustian bargains and hidden political agendas embedded in the
so-called “inspiration culture” underlying a too-powerful
industry. A funny, highly informative, and terrifying read."
--Kirkus (starred review)
"[Wiener] is an extremely gifted writer and cultural critic.
Uncanny Valley may be a defining memoir of the 2020s, and it’s
one that will send a massive chill down your spine." --BookPage
(starred review)
"[An] insider-y debut memoir that sharply critiques start-up
culture and the tech industry . . . Wiener is an entertaining
writer, and those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at life
in Silicon Valley will want to take a look." --Publishers Weekly
"A compelling takedown of the pitfalls of start-up culture, from
sexism to the lack of guardrails,Uncanny Valley highlights the
maniacal optimism of the twentysomethings behind the screens and
the pitfalls of the culture they are building.” --Booklist
"I've never read anything like Uncanny Valley, which is both a
searching bird's-eye study of an industry and a generation, as
well as an , microscopic portrait of ambition and hope
and dread. Anna Wiener writes about the promise and the decay of
Silicon Valley with the impossibly pleasurable combination of a
precise, razored intellect and a soft, incandescent heart. Her
memoir is diagnostic and exhilarating, a definitive document of a
world in transition: I won't be alone in returning to it for
clarity and consolation for many years to come." ―Jia Tolentino,
author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
"Uncanny Valley is a generation-defining account of the amoral
late-capitalist tech landscape we are ally enmeshed in. With
grace and humor, Anna Wiener shows us the misogyny, avarice, and
optimistic self-delusion of our cultural moment, wrapped up in
the gripping story of a young woman navigating the blurred
boundaries of a seductive world. Inful, compelling and
urgent." ―Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter: A Novel
"Like Joan Didion at a startup."―Rebecca Solnit, author of Call
Them By Their True Names
“A rare mix of acute, funny, up-to-the-minute social observation,
dead-serious contemplation of the tech industry’s annexation of
our lives, and a sincere first-person search for meaningful work
and connection. How does an unworn pair of plain sneakers ‘become
a monument to the end of sensuousness’? Read on.”―William
Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
"Uncanny Valley is an addictive combination of coming-of-age
story, journalistic memoir, and brilliant social critique. This
is a stunningly good book. I loved it.” ―Dani Shapiro, author of
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
"Uncanny Valley is a sentimental education for our accelerated
times, a memoir so good it will make you slow down. Is it too
much to say that every sculpted page will be studied by future
generations? (No.) Anna Wiener is the Joan Didion of start-up
culture and then some." ―Ed Park, author of Personal Days
"Alternately outrageous and outraging. What makes Uncanny Valley
unforgettable is not just Wiener's unique take on tech, but the
fun of being along on the journey with her. Her immense
intelligence and facility with language make the pages fly. She's
generous, quippy, introspective and always self-deprecating.
Technophobes have nothing to fear; she employs jargon mainly for
laughs." --Katie Weed, Shelf Awareness
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