What happens when ambition becomes a religion—and truth becomes an inconvenience?
In How to Rule the World, Theo Baker pulls readers inside Stanford’s elite, pressure-cooked world, where Silicon Valley money, status, and influence shape campus life in unsettling ways. Arriving as an idealistic freshman, Baker expected innovation, brilliance, and possibility. Instead, he found a culture obsessed with power, secrecy, and getting ahead at almost any cost.
His reporting for The Stanford Daily led him into one of the biggest academic scandals in recent memory: allegations of research misconduct involving Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. As Baker investigates, he exposes not only one leader’s fall, but a larger ecosystem where wealth, prestige, and ambition can blur moral lines.
Part memoir, part investigation, this is a gripping look at how institutions protect power—and what it costs to tell the truth.
