Conspiracy

A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire

By: Ryan Holiday

Narrated by: Ryan Holiday

An NPR Book Concierge best book of 2018!

A stunning story about how power works in the modern age - the book the New York Times called "one helluva page-turner" and The Sunday Times of London celebrated as "riveting...an astonishing modern media conspiracy that is a fantastic read." Pick up the book everyone is talking about.

In 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private.

This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental - it had been masterminded by Thiel.

For years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the "Gawker Problem". When an unmarked envelope delivered an illegally recorded sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, Gawker had seen the chance for millions of page views and to say the things that others were afraid to say. Thiel saw their publication of the tape as the opportunity he was looking for. He would come to pit Hogan against Gawker in a multi-year proxy war through the Florida legal system, while Gawker remained confidently convinced they would prevail as they had over so many other lawsuit - until it was too late.

The verdict would stun the world and so would Peter's ultimate unmasking as the man who had set it all in motion. Why had he done this? How had no one discovered it? What would this mean - for the First Amendment? For privacy? For culture?

In Holiday's masterful telling of this nearly unbelievable conspiracy, informed by interviews with all the key players, this case transcends the narrative of how one billionaire took down a media empire or the current state of the free press. It's a study in power, strategy, and one of the most wildly ambitious - and successful - secret plots in recent memory.

Some will cheer Gawker's destruction and others will lament it, but after listening to this audiobook - and seeing the access the author was given - no one will deny that there is something ruthless and brilliant about Peter Thiel's shocking attempt to shake up the world.

©2018 Ryan Holiday (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Captivating account of one of media’s strangest sagas

I was an avid Gawker reader who was horrified to learn that billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel had secretly bankrolled the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that brought down the website with a shocking $140 million verdict in 2016. I considered myself reasonably well informed about the ins and outs of the affair, as well as my opinion on the subject and its players. Nevertheless, Ryan Holiday's insanely good Conspiracy had me gasping at the audacity and intricacies of Thiel's plot -- from the ambitious young businessman who cooked up the scheme to the astonishing patience, calculated cunning, and ruthlessness required to pull it off. Holiday also reexamines Gawker from a 2018 lens, deconstructing its problematic approach and how errantly it drove the nail into its own coffin. Hubris plays a part in both sides, it turns out, and in Holiday’s hands the story takes on the outsize dimensions of Greek tragedy. With the Machiavellian concept of conspiracy as his foundation, he combines anecdotes from history and literature with lucid analysis and fascinating character studies of Thiel, Hogan, and Gawker founder Nick Denton to craft a riveting narrative of one of modern media's most explosive episodes. Holiday narrates his own work, and while at times I found his delivery somewhat heavy-handed, I believe this is uniquely his story to tell. Highly recommended.

Well researched and well told

The narration is halting, but you’ll get used to it. The story of how Peter Thiel took down Gawker is as fascinating as it is depressing. Effective use of framing this against other great and not so great conspiracies throughout history.

Not enough courtroom drama

I was looking forward to learning more about the trial. Unfortunately there was very little coverage of the actual testimony and almost nothing quoted from the closing arguments. It seemed to me that the author was more interested in demonstrating his knowledge of, and philosophy behind, other conspiracies.

Amazing storyteller

I really enjoy reading and listening to Ryan Holiday’s books. I have read a couple books of his and every time he has an amazing way of telling stories. At one point in this book, I was getting upset with some of the comments that Ryan was sharing that other people were making about the how Peter handled things which shows how he pulls you into the story. In the end, I really think this book makes you think about how and what the implications are for a conspiracy story. That is what Ryan does best; making you stop and think.

A Good Listen!

A Ryan Holiday style recounting of "The Billionaire The Hulk & The Internet Troll". An easy listen chalked with historical ancient truths and unbaised accounts of the legal,emotional, and strategic shootout.

Weirdly Anti-Trump

Extremely entertaining - until it takes a radical anti-Trump turn during the final hour, and uses Thiel’s 2016 campaigning in support of Trump to argue Thiel got some sort of comeuppance from the media. Which was the point of his support of Trump. Or something. It was weird and opinionated and had nothing to do with the rest of the story.

Fascinating Tale with Questionable Narration

A reliance on Machiavelli's quotes aside, the story was well-crafted and kept me interested throughout. Mr. Holiday does an excellent job of presenting a holistic view of the situation, taking us through it in intricate but accessible means, and peppering it with unobtrusive opinions when appropriate. I expected the book to be a hatchet job on Peter Thiel, but was pleasantly surprised when Thiel's motivations were given more nuance and depth than just that of revenge. I look forward to exploring more works by the author.

The narration, however, was dismal - something I blame on the producer rather than the author/performer. It's as if Mr. Holiday has never seen these words before, and rushes through the last few words of each sentence as if they were a surprise to him. Further, it appears he suffers through a cold 2/3 of the way through; why the producer insisted on keeping his stuffy-nose reading on the recording is questionable and sloppy. It would have benefited the book and the listener greatly if they'd found someone else to record the audiobook.

Great for 90%, then ends bashing Trump

His voice wasn’t my favorite, but I got over it. The Gawker/Hogan story was told in detail, then the author couldn’t help himself and dedicated the last hour to bash Trump. Listen to the story, skip the ending.

Loved this book, but

The narration was awful. Stuck with it because the story was great and eventually you get used to it. Hulk Hogan was the cog in the machine, but the overarching themes were so much more. You could think of this book as two massively wealthy and powerful egos fighting to the death. But what has our current lack of civility and civil court system wrought that fosters this. Moreover, this is a story about a bunch of people who - to a lesser or greater degree - left morality, ethics, and basic decency behind.

A good story told terribly

I appreciate the time, work and effort that went in to compiling the information for this book and I really wanted to hear this story. It is fascinating to me, but you lost me as a reader/listener because of the narration. You made a fascinating tale boring and it was almost impossible for my mind not to wander to things like, should I do my dishes now or start the laundry. I found myself having to rewind because I could not stay focused on what the narrator/author was saying. It wasn't because of substance. I would try again to listen to this if someone who knew how to narrate a book, would. I was so disappointed.