BAD BLOOD

One of Bill Gates' "5 Books I Loved in 2018"

Winner of the 2018 Financial Times (FT) and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup 'unicorn' promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier.

Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: the technology didn't work.

For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at the Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos' articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors.

In Bad Blood John Carreyrou tells the story of Theranos, and encourages us to consider the possible repercussions of our blind faith in a small group of brilliant individuals.

Now to be adapted into a film, with Jennifer Lawrence to star.

About the Author

John Carreyrou is a member of the Wall Street Journal's investigative reporting team. He joined the Journal in 1999 and has been based in Brussels, Paris, and New York for the paper. John has covered a number of topics during his career, ranging from Islamist terrorism when he was on assignment in Europe to the pharmaceutical industry and the US healthcare system. His reporting on corruption in the field of spine surgery led to long prison terms for a California hospital owner and a Michigan neurosurgeon. His reporting on Theranos was recognized with a George Polk Award. Born in New York and raised in Paris, he currently resides in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.