Riot Recommendation

Riot Recommendation: What Are Your Favorite Books That Satirize Modern Life?

S. Zainab Williams

Executive Director, Content

S. Zainab would like to think she bleeds ink but the very idea makes her feel faint. She writes fantasy and horror, and is currently clutching a manuscript while groping in the dark. Find her on Twitter: @szainabwilliams.

This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Disrupted by Dan Lyons.
After being laid off from his longtime career as a Newsweek journalist, Dan Lyons decided it was time he joined those people who he’d spent so long writing about striking it rich in start-up land. What could possibly go wrong? In a word, everything. In his instant New York Times bestseller, Disrupted—which the Los Angeles Times calls the “best book about Silicon Valley today”—Lyons details his ‘misadventure’ within the bright orange, candy-lined walls of marketing software start-up HubSpot and, in doing so, offers a long overdue reality check on the “maddening world of start-up excess, hubris and groupthink.” (Mashable)


From Twitter threads to beard salons to portraits of the modern family, there’s no dearth of fodder for contemporary satire. Tell us in the comments below: what’s your favorite book that satirizes modern life?

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