Careless People - Sarah Wynn-Williams

 Sub-title: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

Sarah was the Director of Public Policy for Facebook from 2011 until she was fired in 2017.  She was "in the room where it happened" managing Facebook's strategies for expanding across the world.  And that strategy was horrific, the attitude and goals of its leaders being to put Facebook everywhere regardless of the impact on people.  She is under a gag order from the courts as Meta (Facebook) used her for violating her severance agreement.

I found the memoir disturbing - both as a portrait of a company run by the next generation and as a revealing, likely unintentional self-portrait.  It was strange to be invited into this world of power, unbelievable money, the edge of innovation and a new technology.  Sarah claims to have been part of an idealistic team of people intent on bringing access and connection to everyone on the globe.  Then she describes how they deviated from that goal, succumbing to the intoxication of controlling an unbridled tool.  Her story is convincing and disgusting.  What I grappled with was her staying in the middle of it; hanging on to the feeling she could make a difference being on the inside.  

She grapples with the second in command, a woman named Sheryl Sandberg (author of "Lean In") who preached the rights of women to work and have a family while demanding 24/7 working hours - to the point of Sarah choosing to send an email while she was in labor with her first child.  Insane acceptance of a destructive culture.  

As of July 2026, Sarah was still prohibited from promoting the book. If you can find it, read it.

Published: 2025  Read: September 2026  Genre: Memoir

Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe

Sub-title: The Secret History of the Sackler Empire

This is the story of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma and manufacturers of Oxycontin.  Derived from the poppy flower, opium has been the scourge of people trying to escape pain for centuries.  It's powerful effects lead to addiction and a guaranteed market for suppliers.  Purdu

e made billions of dollars on the drug, inventing the aggressive marketing to physicians and extravagant bonuses to its sales force, never acknowledging its impact on the epidemic it created in the U.S. The author is an investigative journalist who spent several years researching and documenting the rise of the Sackler fortune.

His book tracks the three brothers born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents in the early 1900's, through their rise in New York society and around the world, becoming known for their philanthropy while keeping vague about the source of their fortune.   It was an inside view of the attitudes, lifestyle and values of a very wealthy, privileged family living their own different view of reality.  

There's detailed documentation of the inside correspondence of the company, the micro management carried out by the family members and the lawsuits brought against them.  

It was depressing and appalling to see the lives destroyed and the total lack of any acceptance of responsibility or si accountability.  

Quotes: 

[They made an agreement] "that was known as a tontine, an antique investment instrument ..in which a number of participants band together in what is effectively a mortality lottery."

 "Upton Sinclair wrote that a man has difficulty understanding something if his salary depends on him not understanding"

Published:  2021  Read: November 2024  Genre: History

The Smartest Guys in the Room: - Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind

 Sub-title: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron 

I'd taken a while to finish this, reading a bit at night for several weeks.  It's a hard story to take.  The greed, arrogance, bravado of smart people without a conscience or concern what whether what they were doing was right, only that it could be done.  

Published: 2013  Read: November 2022  Genre: Business, History