This is the Juiciest, Wildest Story of the Year
I don’t care that we’re not even halfway through a most upside-down, harrowing, bizarro-world year. I’m ready to call the book I’m talking about today the wildest ride of 2025. It’s rare that I come across a book as incendiary as everyone claims it is, but it happened. I was planning to read this whistleblower memoir after learning that an emergency ruling prohibited its author from promoting the book–it shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list anyway, so, yeah…methinks that lawsuit backfired–but I stopped everything to bump it to the top of my reading list when my friend said she needed to talk with someone about the unbelievable shark story that opens the book. Now how could I resist such a baffling and exciting invitation?
All Access members, read more about the book I’m declaring the wildest true story of the year!
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
“What?” “WHAT?” This is what I hissed under my breath while reading the first chapter of Sarah Wynn-Williams’ memoir about her time working as a global policy-focused executive for then-Facebook (now Meta). I was listening to Wynn-Williams, who expertly narrates the audiobook, tell a true story from her childhood that both gives readers insight into her instincts and sets the tone for a harrowing read about the kinds of predatory power-seeking she allegedly faced on the job, which one could easily liken to bloodlust. I went into the book, which begins in the early days of Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were the faces of a scrappy social media platform still figuring itself out, with my long-held belief that terrible people run this empire where terrible things are not just permitted but encouraged to happen. I still managed to walk away shaken by the narcissism, the hypocrisy, the seeming-sociopathy of it all, as told by Wynn-Williams. Careless is putting it lightly.
Wynn-Williams pivots a career in diplomacy into private work for Facebook believing she can help bring the company to its full potential. Even as she sees the yellow and then screaming red flags, she is fixated by the idea that this powerful company can change the world for the better. As she gets to know the people at the very top of the chain and understand their motivations and weaknesses, her resolve wavers. The thing is, it takes zombie-apocalypse-level sirens to clear her head and alert her to danger in the water. Reading this book felt like reading about someone in an abusive, toxic relationship–it was hard to watch some of these recountings, especially relating to alleged abuses she faced while pregnant and as a new mother on the job. I wanted to reach through time and tell her to run as far and fast as she could.
Again, the shark story tells us something about Wynn-Williams herself, and it’s obvious through her observations and accomplishments that she’s a sharp and strategic person. I believe she wanted to come out of this story largely innocent, but–and I say this with empathy for the hyper-driven “fixers” of the world–there’s no doubt in my mind that Wynn-Williams was complicit in the making of Zuck’s monster. That said, someone had to tell the story of Facebook and, after reading this book, I can’t imagine a better person for the job.
