The Contrarian
Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
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The Contrarian
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Narrated by:
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Will Damron
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By:
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Max Chafkin
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents The Contrarian by Max Chafkin, read by Will Damron.
A biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial and hugely influential power broker who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech, business and politics
Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater global impact than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. From the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, Thiel has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of contemporary life. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.
In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, such as funding the lawsuit that bankrupted the blog Gawker to strenuously backing far-right political candidates, including Donald Trump for president.
Eye-opening and deeply reported, The Contrarian is a revelatory biography of a one-of-a-kind leader and an incisive portrait of a tech industry whose explosive growth and power is both thrilling and fraught with controversy.
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What listeners say about The Contrarian
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- D Kamara
- 22-10-21
Not convinced!
It’s an interesting story but it reads like the author definitely has a problem with Peter Thiel and that really comes through… to the extent it diminishes the validity of the book. Some of the things that are attributed to Thiel and his Machiavellian plays on the US govt are just too much of a stretch for me. It feels like the author came up with an anti Thiel narrative and then came up with all sorts is stretched of the imagination to make it fit.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Garreth Byrne
- 27-11-23
biased but worthwhile
worth the read if you are interested in Thiel and can put up with a leftist hatchet job. Knowing a few of the facts beforehand gives an idea of the level of partisan slant. can't give above a 3 as buying is giving the author enough reward as is
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Sports fan PL
- 08-02-22
Brilliant insight into the modern word!
If you've ever wondered about the tech titans, their reach and influence and where their ideas/thinking comes from... this is a brilliant deep dive. A story of our times.
From libertarian ideals, Austrian economics, the machinations of a Trump presidency and some odd/zeitgeist thinking...
For me, this book identified the genesis of some ideas that seem to be so prevalent nowadays. I had no previous awareness of their origins or how they came to promenence.
A great guidebook - Goes well with Jane Mayers 'Dark Money'
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Rodger Delehanty
- 01-12-22
Enjoyable but flawed
Lots of interesting detail in the book but the author's apparent dislike of Thiel and his politics is ever present. Credit for his achievements is given grudgingly, if at all. Tenuous links to various unseemly right wing characters or positions are presented as if they are smoking gun reveals of a closet fascist but they all feel pretty weak. There is some nice exploration of the apparent contradictions between some of Thiel's statements and actions. Overall, Thiel's story by itself, which feels well researched here, is interesting enough to carry the book. However, people more familiar with him than I am may already have been aware of much of this.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Graham
- 10-10-21
A missed opportunity, and willfully disengenuous.
The intention seems to be to make us concerned about Thiel, rather than to attempt a balanced account. It introduces a number of negative events, many of which are exaggerated, and then tenuously places Mr Thiel proximal to them. I was particularly amused with the inference that somehow a ten year old Peter Thiel was supposed to deal with the plight of uranium miners in Namibia...
The book spends of lot of time trying to paint him in such a fashion, and after the first few attempts it became a bit boring. It makes the book a lot less valuable than it could have been.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- foufoutos
- 30-10-21
Entertaining yellowish book, bad biography
The book is entertaining and is a character assassination with a political agenda. It's not the valuable business book about Peter Thiel you would expect. If you want to gain something it's definitely not here. If you look for some hours of entertainment why not?
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Mat
- 06-11-23
Great potential but Democrat politics destroy objectivity
Some interesting history of Thiel but the author insists on regurgitating every Democrat talking point in the book to try and paint Thiel as a villain which demolished the objectivity of the novel. Endless examples but a sample includes talking about Trump enacting a ‘muslim ban’ which he never did as it was a restriction on specific countries deemed high security risk (whether citizens were Muslim or not and excluded many nations predominantly Muslim). I am not arguing whether it was correct or not, I am commenting on how the author framed this from a regurgitated Democrat talking point perspective, not an objective one. This Democrat-talking-point-narrative becomes nauseating quite quickly and if you told me Hillary Clinton wrote this it wouldn’t surprise me (that’s how heavily biased it is). The author lives in a bubble and his biases ruined what could have been an excellent look into the controversial brilliance of Peter Thiel.
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