<b>“Poignant, maddening, and genuinely hilarious, <i>How to Rule the World</i> is to be devoured—and fast, before Stanford buys up and sets fire to every copy. (Talk about a burn book!)” —Mark Leibovich, #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of<i> This Town</i><br><br>Winner of the George Polk Award for his investigation that brought down Stanford’s president, Theo Baker offers a revelatory and gripping account of Silicon Valley hubris</b><br><br>Slush funds. Shell companies. Yacht parties. This is life for Silicon Valley’s favored teenagers.<br><br>Seventeen-year-old Theo Baker showed up for freshman year at Stanford University as a tech-obsessed coder. It seemed like paradise. There were Rodin sculptures next to nuclear laboratories and inventors lounging with Olympians. But Baker soon discovered a culture that embraced corner-cutting, that vested infinite excess and access in the hands of kids with few safeguards to catch bad behavior.<br><br>Stanford, he realized, was less a school than a business. Its annual budget was nearly twice that of Harvard or Yale and higher than those of 116 countries. The product? Students. Especially those special few identified as the next trillion-dollar startup founders. For them, there were secret societies, “pre-idea” funding offers, and social calls from billionaires, all with the expectation that these geniuses would soon join the ruling elite.<br><br>At the helm of this business was Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a superstar neuroscientist and wealthy biotech executive. But when Baker joined the student newspaper and started poking around the Stanford president’s record, he discovered never-reported allegations of research misconduct in studies published across two decades bearing Tessier-Lavigne's name.<br><br>Only one month into college and thousands of miles from home, Baker began receiving anonymous letters, going on stakeouts, and tracking down confidential sources. High-powered lawyers and public relations teams were hired to attack his reporting. Stanford opened an investigation into its own leader. And by the end of the year, Tessier-Lavigne was out as president.<br><br>This is the incredible journey of a reluctant teenage reporter who uncovered a story that shook the scientific world and became front-page news across the country. It is also an unprecedented inside view of the students learning to rule the world—and what they’re learning from those who already do.<br><br><i>How to Rule the World</i> is a shocking, hilarious, and moving debut, showcasing Silicon Valley’s training ground as never before.