The Contrarian

Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

By: Max Chafkin

Narrated by: Will Damron

A New York Times Notable Book

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

“Max Chafkin’s The Contrarian is much more than a consistently shocking biography of Peter Thiel, the most important investor in tech and a key supporter of the Donald Trump presidency. It’s also a disturbing history of Silicon Valley that will make you reconsider the ideological foundations of America’s relentless engine of creative destruction.” (Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound)

Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. 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, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and strenuously backing far-right political candidates, notably Donald Trump for president in 2016.

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.

©2021 Max Chafkin (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A judicious biography. . . . Unfailing diligent. . . . The Contrarian isn’t just about Thiel; it’s about Silicon Valley’s political coming-of-age, too.”—New York Times

“In writing a biography of Thiel, the deck was stacked against Max Chafkin . . . who daringly took to the task. His new book . . . charts the billionaire’s rise from his early days as a precocious chess champion who never quite fit in to a world-conquering tech visionary and political firebrand.”—Fortune, “The Best Books of 2021”

“Peter Thiel is one of tech’s most powerful people and one of its most enigmatic. That’s why Max Chafkin’s new biography of Thiel is so welcome. The Contrarian is a deep study of a Valley anomaly. . . . Chafkin digs deep to help us understand his subject.”—Wired

This author hates Thiel

More of a slight at Thiel than informative, this one had a chance to given a different perspective but took a turn into letting politics and bias guide the narrative.

The chess player

Being a huge fan of his Zero to One, I found this book interesting for other reasons.
First it gives a background to Thiels religious and conservative views from his childhood so you can start to understand him.
Then it gives a very interesting perspective for me as a European into US politics and the conservative media world of reality distortion that seems to be a fun game to do at Stanford for people that takes extreme conservative standpoints. Just to identify themselves with something else and build an identity and eventually a career out of it. I know people that are exactly like this and sort of Mensa material, but here they don’t work very well with the rest of society. In the US they seems to flourish and move into power. Very strange, but also very interesting to understand.

My understanding of Thiel after reading this is that he plays simultaneous chess with almost everything he does. Something he loved to do in his teenage years but now with real people, money, companies and politics.

The book is very critical of Thiels work, but it’s well written, almost like a detective story to uncover Thiel, and the voice reader is one of the best. Thus I finished this book in record times.

I do think the book will need an update of the later chapters in a few years as it spends a lot of time with Trump, the Pandemic and Silicon Valley that might be viewed differently in a few years.

Biased But Interesting

At points the author seems subjective and neutral but near the end you really get to see the left leaning lens in which this story is told through. I wish the author would’ve used Thiel’s narrative to tell a different story other than the typical mainstream media take.

Slightly Biased, Decent Book

Anyone should be able to tell the author is not a fan of Peter Thiel, with that said this is an interesting book. Peter Thiel and others clearly possess alot of influence over certain things, but the author gives the impression that Peter Thiel somehow conspired Covid 19, 911, and the housing crash simply because Thiel and his companies made money off the disasters. I don't believe Thiel has any founded political ideology because he's smart enough to know it's all smoke and mirrors for a greater objective.

Snore fest; Elon Musk’s story is way better.

Well researched and gives nuanced perspectives but even at the end Thiel seems just as distant and puzzling a character as in the beginning. As for the value of his impact on the valley and the world; questionable. Use your credit for Elon’s book by Isaacson instead.

Scary

it is truly frightening to see how deeply flawed an individual can amass such wealth and power. it is ironic that those that rail against deep states and New world orders are themselves the ones the most entrenched in it.....

WHAT ELSE CAN I SAY?

YIKES! This is a character study of someone I would not want/hope to be.

an important story and keystone in valley lore

at times felt biased, other times justified. I feel ready to watch Thiels involvement in 2024 politics more than ever. and while I once dreamed of working at an early stage founders fund company, now I'm not so sure.

Exposé of note

I must confess that the book "Zero to One" prompted me to buy and read this book. I must confess that Thiel is quite a DARK person as portrayed by this book. As must as I find Thiel's business thinking intriguing, I find his political thinking repulsive... I suspect his days in Apartheid South Africa really messed with him in a bad and permanent way.

Interesting read on Peter’s Machiavellian style

I had second thoughts getting this book due to the reviews. Although this isn’t a positive portrayal, I think it gave an honest take on how Thiel has managed to climb his way to the top. Taking unpopular bets with large upsides, grabbing power at opportune times and creating groups with him as a central figure to achieve his means. It’s a great read and I enjoyed this behind the scenes look at Thiel’s life.