The Nerd Reich is a New York Times Bestseller!

We did it! The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy is officially a New York Times “Instant Bestseller.”

My book debuted at #3 on the hardcover nonfiction list. Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered the book or bought it the first week—or who requested it at their local public library and/or spread the word to others. It’s not easy for a first-time book author to make the list. I could not have done it without you, my first readers.

I am especially grateful to my agent, Caroline Eisenmann of Frances Goldin Literary Agency. She took me seriously at a moment when no other agent would return my queries, and here we are.

I was also super fortunate to have an amazing editor in Shannon Welch of Avid Reader Press, who gave me space to cook and coached me toward the best version possible. The entire team at Avid Reader has been amazing, scoring major media appearances (Fresh Air, Democracy Now, MS NOW, The Guardian) during launch week.

There’s more to come, and hopefully the bestseller status will erode some of the lingering hesitancy among certain legacy media institutions and personalities.

And if you didn’t get the book on launch week, now is a great time to do so! Buy it here to support this newsletter (or get it at your local independent bookstore).

In the meantime, I’m doing a ton of podcasts and interviews. Here is one of my favorites so far, my talk with Paris Marx of Tech Won’t Save Us. Paris was one of the first journalists to give me a platform back in 2024, so it was great to catch up.

‘The independent side is pretty scary’

Thor Benson interviewed me about why I became a journalist, and what it’s like to be an independent journalist taking on powerful billionaire interests. From the interview in Long Lead:

I made a tremendous investment of my own money to do the work that eventually became my book. There were moments when I thought, “Am I making a really stupid mistake here?” And I’ll be honest, there are days when you’re like, “Let’s just drop this and look for a damn job right now.” I was in politics. I could go make hundreds of thousands of dollars to advise people on what to say in a press release. Journalism is what I want to do, but there are moments where you think, “Is this just a dead end? Am I having a midlife crisis by trying to be an independent journalist?” That’s what it could seem like. But I persevered through that and got some pieces published. Those got a bigger reaction than almost anything else I had even published in a newspaper.