Play Audiobook Sample
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(0.00) - 0 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Narrator Suehyla El-Attar has a strong voice for this memoir of a woman's journey into the mostly male world of tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. She is energetic, funny, and swift while telling the story of Anna Wiener's acculturation from book publishing in Manhattan to the dot-com boom in San Francisco." — AudioFile Magazine
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a January 2020 IndieNext Pick. An Amazon Best Book of January. One of Vogue's 22 Books to Read This Winter, The Washington Post's 10 Books to Read in January, ELLE's 12 Best Books to Read in 2020, The New York Times's 12 Books to Read in January, Esquire's 15 Best Winter Books, Paste's 10 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2020, and Entertainment Weekly's 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2020.
"A definitive document of a world in transition: I won't be alone in returning to Uncanny Valley for clarity and consolation for many years to come." —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
The prescient account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age.
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.
Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Part coming-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.
Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.
A Macmillan Audio production from MCD
Download and start listening now!
“Uncanny Valley is a different sort of Silicon Valley narrative, a literary-minded outsider’s insider account of an insulated world that isn’t as insular or distinctive as it and we assume.”
— The Atlantic
Quotes
-
“Wiener’s storytelling mode is keen and dry, her sentences spare—perfectly suited to let a steady thrum of dread emerge.”
— New York Times -
“Weiner’s on-the-ground observations, coupled with acuity she brings to understanding the psychology at work, makes the book illuminating on a page-by-page basis.”
— Chicago Tribune -
“Biting and funny…Uncanny Valley ought to be read by policymakers just as closely as any set of statistics.”
— Los Angeles Times -
“Anna Wiener draws on her anxiety-addled experiences working at several tech startups during her mid-20s in what may be a defining memoir of the 2020s.”
— BookPage (starred review)
Awards
-
A BookPage Top Pick of the Month
-
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
-
A Washington Post Pick of the Month
-
A Vogue Pick for Winter
-
An Esquire Pick of Winter Reads
-
New York Times bestseller
-
A #1 Amazon.com bestseller in High-Tech Businesses
-
Among longlisted titles for New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Chicago Tribune Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Los Angeles Times Holiday Books Guide, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among shortlisted titles for Audie Award Finalist, 2021
-
Among longlisted titles for Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Chicago Tribune Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Los Angeles Times Holiday Books Guide, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Esquire Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among longlisted titles for Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2020
-
Among shortlisted titles for Audie Award Finalist, 2021
-
Among longlisted titles for Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year, 2020
Uncanny Valley Listener Reviews
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
About Anna Wiener
Anna Wiener is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, New York, Harper’s, New Republic, n+1, and frequently online at the New Yorker, where she writes about Silicon Valley, start-up culture, and technology, as well as in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017.
About the Narrators
Suehyla El-Attar Young is an actress and writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. She dabbled in radio for a bit, working with several well-known stations as a morning news personality and DJ. Eventually, she returned to acting, on stage and in film. She has nurtured both crafts of acting and writing, working with local companies such as Theatre du Reve, Synchronicity Theatre, the Alliance Theatre Company, and Horizon Theatre Company as dramaturge, actress, and playwright on several projects.
Suehyla El-Attar Young is an actress and writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. She dabbled in radio for a bit, working with several well-known stations as a morning news personality and DJ. Eventually, she returned to acting, on stage and in film. She has nurtured both crafts of acting and writing, working with local companies such as Theatre du Reve, Synchronicity Theatre, the Alliance Theatre Company, and Horizon Theatre Company as dramaturge, actress, and playwright on several projects.