Uncanny Valley, by Anna Wiener

One of the New York Times’s 10 best books of 2020  Now out in paperback! “Extraordinary . . . Wiener’s storytelling mode is keen and dry, her sentences spare—perfectly suited to let a steady thrum of dread emerge.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times Adapted from Anna Wiener’s widely read and celebrated essay in n+1 Issue 25, Uncanny Valley is a rare first-person glimpse into Silicon Valley’s reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, rapacious greed, unregulated surveillance, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Wiener deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from idealistic self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment. Unsparing, darkly incisive, and haunting, Uncanny Valley is a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its designers are only beginning to understand. Praise for Uncanny Valley “I’ve never read anything like Unca