Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams is an account of the author’s employment at Facebook as a director of global public policy, working closely with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for six years. Hailing from New Zealand with a professional background as a diplomat, Wynn-Williams joined the social media company in 2011 and was initially full of idealism about Facebook’s power to connect people around the world. According to Wynn-Williams, Sandberg did the total opposite of what she preached in her book Lean In about supporting women in the workplace. Her portrayal of Zuckerberg’s discomfort in meetings with world leaders are the main source of dark humour in the book. The success of the book has been driven by the Streisand effect of Meta attempting to block its publication, and while the toxic workplace culture, the role of Facebook in the genocide in Myanmar, the algorithms engineered to exploit vulnerable people and the social awkwardness of its creator have already been documented elsewhere, Careless People is a devastating exposé by a former senior employee which should be widely read. Continue reading
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Books I Read in March 2026
Filed under Books
Books I Read in May 2024
Knife by Salman Rushdie recounts how the world-famous author survived an attempted murder at a literary event in New York in August 2022, over three decades after a fatwa was issued which forced him into hiding for several years. Rushdie manages to create suspense despite the outcome of the shocking attack being well known, and describes his distressing injuries and long recovery in some detail. The passage where Rushdie imagines a conversation with his attacker, who he refers to only as “The A”, is a creative and moving way of addressing such a traumatic event. Above all though, Rushdie is keen to emphasise that ‘Knife’ is also a love story. Many people were unaware that he had quietly married author and poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths less than a year before the attack, and the book is a moving tribute to her support. Rushdie said that writing about the attack was the only way he would be able to move forward, and I hope that this has helped him achieve that. Many thanks to Vintage Books for sending me a review copy via NetGalley. Continue reading
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