Great read — "Bad Blood"

Real estate activity is so slow today that I read a book, instead of trying to do much blogging (I've been reading a lot of books lately, including re-reading all 23 Dewey Lambdin's Alan Lewrie naval series), but up today was WSJ reporter John Carreyrou's "Bad Blood", a recounting of the supposed blood testing machine "invented" by 19-year-old wunderkind Elizabeth Holmes and the Silicon Valley firm she founded, Theranos. I spent many years chasing financial fraudsters and developed a fine sense of cynicism about the world of finance, but even I fell for the first glowing reports about Theranos; in fact, I think I forwarded the first WSJ 2013 article to my girls, as encouragement for them to pursue their own entrepreneurial drives. I was in good company, though; Silicon Valley heavyweights were sucked in, too, and eventually Elizabeth Holmes loaded her board of directors with prominent names like Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and even, briefly, Mad Dog Mattis. 

It was all smoke and mirrors, and Carreyrou details how he unraveled and exposed the scheme, from the first whistle blowers who reached out to him (including George Schultz's grandson, who worked at Theranos), and the vicious fight Holmes waged to prevent the Journal from exposing the fraud.

It's a genuine whodunit, and if you enjoy this sort of tale, I highly recommend it. If not, you can't go wrong with Lamdin's world of squareriggers in the late 18th-early-19th century.