A reader-friendly guide to the inner workings and behind-the-scenes action of Silicon Valley and venture capitalism.

Investigative reporter Gary Rivlin gives an armchair tour of the world of venture capitalism, while providing vivid case studies illustrating how to get started in the field. He shows how once-small companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon used venture capitalism to transform into the icons they are today, and the VCs that made a fortune in the process. Readers will learn what series funding is, the difference between an angel and super angel investor, and how to go about identifying ideas worthy of funding.

Becoming a Venture Capitalist is not only an exclusive look into the world of legendary venture firms–as well as stories of their most interesting characters, including Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Mark Zuckerberg–but a wonderful guide on how to break into a seemingly impenetrable world.

An acclaimed investigative journalist explores ethical hacking and presents a reader-friendly, informative guide to everything there is to know about entering the field of cybersecurity.

It’s impossible to ignore the critical role cybersecurity plays within our society, politics, and the global order. In Becoming an Ethical Hacker, investigative reporter Gary Rivlin offers an easy-to-digest primer on what white hat hacking is, how it began, and where it’s going, while providing vivid case studies illustrating how to become one of these “white hats” who specializes in ensuring the security of an organization’s information systems. He shows how companies pay these specialists to break into their protected systems and networks to test and assess their security. Readers will learn how these white hats use their skills to improve security by exposing vulnerabilities before malicious hackers can detect and exploit them. Weaving practical how-to advice with inspiring case studies, Rivlin provides concrete, practical steps anyone can take to pursue a career in the growing field of cybersecurity.

From the author of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Drive By comes a unique and riveting exploration of one of America’s largest and fastest-growing industries–the business of poverty. Broke, USA is a Fast Food Nation for the “poverty industry” that will also appeal to readers of Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and David Shipler (The Working Poor).

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisiana, journalist Gary Rivlin traces the storm’s immediate damage, the city of New Orleans’ efforts to rebuild itself, and the storm’s lasting effects not just on the city’s geography and infrastructure—but on the psychic, racial, and social fabric of one of this nation’s great cities.

Much of New Orleans still sat under water the first time Gary Rivlin glimpsed the city after Hurricane Katrina. Then a staff reporter for the New York Times, he was heading into the city to survey the damage. The Interstate was eerily empty. Soldiers in uniform and armed with assault rifles stopped him. Water reached the eaves of houses for as far as the eye could see.

Four out of every five houses—eighty percent of the city’s housing stock—had been flooded. Around that same proportion of schools and businesses were wrecked. The weight of all that water on the streets cracked gas and water and sewer pipes all around town, and the deluge had drowned almost every power substation and rendered unusable most of the city’s water and sewer system.

People living in flooded areas of the city could not be expected to pay their property taxes for the foreseeable future. Nor would all those boarded-up businesses—21,000 of the city’s 22,000 businesses were still shuttered six months after the storm—be contributing their share of sales taxes and other fees to the city’s coffers. Six weeks after the storm, the city laid off half its workforce—precisely when so many people were turning to its government for help. Meanwhile, cynics both in and out of the Beltway were questioning the use of taxpayer dollars to rebuild a city that sat mostly below sea level. How could the city possibly come back?

This book traces the stories of New Orleanians of all stripes—politicians and business owners, teachers and bus drivers, poor and wealthy, black and white—as they confront the aftermath of one of the great tragedies of our age and reconstruct, change, and in some cases abandon a city that’s the soul of this nation.

A veteran journalist follows an inspiring ensemble cast of small business owners fighting to keep their businesses alive through Covid-19, while exploring the sweeping trends and government policies that had brought small businesses to the breaking point long before the coronavirus hit.

There is a tendency to fetishize small business even as it shrinks before our eyes. Americans extol the virtues of small, local, often family-run shops, yet buy from big-box retailers and chains that dominate the competition. Even before the pandemic, small businesses seemed endangered. When Covid-19 hit, the resounding question was: How will they be able to survive this?

Saving Main Street is an unfiltered, up-close examination of a small group of business owners and their employees, their struggles, and their strategies to survive. It is an eye-opening tale of grit, perseverance, and entrepreneurial spirit that follows three businesses: a restaurant owner and his rambunctious staff, an immigrant running her own hair salon, and the owner of a “non-life sustaining” gift shop–alongside a larger cast of vividly drawn characters.

Gary Rivlin focuses on the first days of the Covid lockdown and the ensuing eighteen months of chaos, including the personal and financial risks, a contentious presidential election, and contradictory governmental guidelines–all which compounded the everyday challenges of running an independent business trying to attract and retain customers who expect low prices, convenience, and endless choice. Rivlin keenly observes small businesses from all angles, examining commonly held “myths”; contradictions in government policy; enormous racial and class fissures; a national self-identity intrinsically connected to the ideal of small business, and how the decline of this American way of retail impacts our notions of American exceptionalism, community, and civic duty.

As Rivlin reveals, there’s something enduring about small business in the American psyche. Life will have changed in unprecedented ways on the other side of this pandemic, yet hard times will also create opportunities, offering hope and survival.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.