Paired Readings

 Elizabeth Holmes' conviction on four fraud counts reminded me of this post from about a year ago about four non-fiction books I enjoyed that could be read in pairs and serve as the basis for interesting discussion by a class or reading group.

First up:

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds' Hit-List by Howard Root

One of these books illustrates numerous failures of our systems, including that of the federal government and the FDA in preventing fraud.

The other book illustrates numerous failures of our systems, including that the federal government and the FDA in allowing the pursuit of vendettas against innocent individuals.

All of which leads to a discussion of how better to prevent fraud while also discouraging abuse of the regulatory and enforcement process by government officials.

Bad Blood is the astonishing tale of Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, and enterprise that collapsed in fraud and failure and with Holmes currently facing a criminal trial.  The book is written like a thriller and is hard to put down - I read the whole thing on a cross-country flight.

With her striking personality and appearance Holmes attracted fervent admirers and supporters who didn't closely inquire into the underlying technology of her company.  She cleverly recruited an extremely prestigious, and old, board, but one which had little knowledge of the technology involved; people like Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, James Mattis, former Senator Sam Nunn, former Secretary of Defense William Perry.

Carreyrou also explains that Holmes being a woman helped persuade most in the media not to inquire too closely into the details.  Instead she was promoted as a role model and rock star CEO by credulous media and her Board members, Perry telling the New Yorker:

"She has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, but I think that’s an inadequate comparison. She has a social consciousness that Steve never had. He was a genius; she’s one with a big heart.”

Carreyrou also becomes a subject in his own story.  He began covering Theranos as a Wall Street Journal reporter, became skeptical about the company and Holmes, and began writing critical stories.  The author discovered that Theranos and Holmes went to the Journal's publisher, Rupert Murdoch, a $100 million investor in Theranos, asking him to stifle Carreyrou, but Murdoch refused to do so.

Cardiac Arrest is written by the CEO of a medical device company in Minnesota that was investigated by the FDA and the Justice Department which ended up indicting him for alleged criminal violations of. Howard Root resigned as CEO to fight the charges, which went to trial where a jury acquitted him on all charges.

The book chronicles Root's increasing disbelief as the matter escalated into a criminal case and goes through in detail every step of a process which is truly mind-boggling in its complexity, and through which the prosecutors were clearly abusing their powers.  Above all, the discretionary power the government has to destroy someone's life is laid out for all to see as we see the stress on Root as the years go by.  A powerful tale and one that I have sympathy with having twice had encounters with federal criminal prosecutors during my career.  As the great novelist George V Higgins advised:

If there is one thing a defense lawyer knows, it's that the government can get you if it wants to.  Any government.  Federal, state or local.  Law-abiding private citizens do not believe this until some government sets out to get them, and they have to pay good money to a man like me to fight for them, but their disbelief is like unto the very dew of May; it evaporates fast.  Along with their bank balances, cheerfulness, and the order of their lives.

Next:

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

My Grandfather's Son by Clarence Thomas

I suspect I am one of the few people to have read both of these books.

Let's leave aside politics for a bit.  I quite enjoyed Dreams From My Father, the story of a biracial young man, who at times harbors a lot of anger, raised in unusual circumstances in Hawaii, graduating from elite Northeast universities and deciding to move to Chicago, become fully "black", and work as a community organizer.  It climaxes with his visit to Kenya to connect with the relatives of his deceased father and finds them to be the usual mix of humanity; kind, crazy, difficult, loving, accomplished, lost.

My Grandfather's Son is the tale of a young man growing up in the segregated South as the descendant of slaves, in an isolated black community that spoke its own dialect.  He unflinchingly portrays the difficult relationship with his father and the transformational relationship with his grandfather who made him the man he became.  He attends elite Northeast universities, deals with rage against white people, initially struggles in his career, and develops a drinking problem.

In light of the striking similarities and differences in their lives, and where Obama and Thomas ended up, reading the books in tandem would generate fascinating discussions about their respective family and social backgrounds and their personalities which led them to follow their respective paths.