Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker and the Anatomy of Intrigue
I’ll go on the record and say I was a fan of the takedown of Gawker before I read this book. The stuff they got away with, for so long, needed to end. If you read this book, you will discover that only one thing was going to change their M.O. and that was to put them out of business.
Two things I’ll say about this book that I didn’t like (and I’m generally a fan of Holiday):
- The number of references to other people in history, and the number of stories told from history, were more than annoying. In fact, I almost stopped reading because of it. I don’t want to know how this relates to George Washington, I just want to read the damn story.
- Holiday brings in Thiel’s relationship to Trump at the end of the book. I thought it was misplaced and completely unnecessary. Regardless of how you may or may not feel about Thiel speaking at the convention, the editorializing around it by Holiday felt like a complete miss.
There’s a lot of back and forth in the book about what this lawsuit represents in terms of someone being able to silence the media, if only they have the means. I didn’t see the case this way before I read the book, and I don’t see it that way after. What Gawker did, for so long, was wrong and they deserve to not be around anymore.