Dan Lyons
Gretchen ErtlSponsored by Mary Lou Forier
Dan Lyons is the New York Times best-selling author of "Disrupted." He is also a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and public speaker. He was a staff writer on the first two seasons of the Emmy-winning HBO series Silicon Valley. Previously, Lyons was technology editor at Newsweek and the creator of the groundbreaking viral blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" (AKA "Fake Steve Jobs"). Lyons has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair and Wired. He lives in Winchester, MA.
His new book is "Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us."
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Tech and Our Changing Culture
We have seen big changes in how we work and play over the past 20 years. But, is it all good? How much has Reddit changed the way we interact on the internet? Has Silicon Valley ruined work for the rest of us? The authors answer these questions and more as they discuss their latest books.
Koffler Room 218 (Seats 142, Wheelchair accessible)
Sat, Mar 2, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Science / Medicine / Technology
Signing area: Sales & Signing Area - Koffler Patio (following presentation)
Panelists:
Christine Lagorio-Chafkin,
Dan Lyons
Moderator: Hildy Ko
The 4th Industrial Revolution
UA Provost Jeff Goldberg will ask Seth Fletcher, Dan Lyons and Joe Schwarcz to explore how break-throughs in a number of technologies are fundamentally changing (and possibly disrupting) our very way of life. Is A.I. the most important scientific discover since electricity? Let's find out!
Modern Languages Room 350 (Seats 318, Wheelchair accessible)
Sun, Mar 3, 10:00 am - 11:00 am
Science / Medicine / Technology
Signing area: Sales & Signing Area - Central Mall (following presentation)
Panelists:
Seth Fletcher,
Dan Lyons,
Joe Schwarcz
Moderator: Jeff Goldberg
Build Your Own Stairway of Success
Wisdom for the Digital Age, when too much information is just too much.
Koffler Room 216 (Seats 89, Wheelchair accessible)
Sun, Mar 3, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Memoir / Essays / Creative Nonfiction
Signing area: Sales & Signing Area - Koffler Patio (following presentation)
Panelists:
Joseph Deitch,
Dan Lyons
Moderator: Stephen Buchmann
Books:

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
Current Issues / Politics / Social Science
Hachette
October 2018
ISBN 9780316561860
272 pages
$28.00, INSTORE
Buy now"A fascinating, thought-provoking, hilarious, and sometimes harrowing account of current work culture.
"---Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project Why do so many people hate their jobs? Lab Rats is a groundbreaking, examination of how the half-baked ideas of Silicon Valley and its "new oligarchs" have changed the way we work, damaged our brains, and left us poorer and insecure. After publishing Disrupted, his bestselling memoir of his disastrous experience working for a young tech company, Dan Lyons watched, astonished, as hundreds of readers wrote to him with their own harrowing stories of discrimination on the job, fear-mongering managers, and companies denigrating employees in pursuit of quick profit. The problems he had identified in the start-up world, Lyons realized, are infecting virtually every kind of job in America--at a time when companies are giving more lip service than ever about happy employees. What happened to work? Who is responsible? And does any company have a model for doing it right? As Lyons ventured across America in pursuit of answers, he came to identify "Four Factors," a series of ideas that have broken the social contract that once existed between companies and their employees. These new, often dystopian notions about work have made millions subject to constant change, dehumanizing technologies, and even health risks. A few companies, however, get it right. With Lab Rats, Lyons makes a passionate plea for business leaders to understand this dangerous transformation and offers a way out--"an approach to work and business that puts people first, profitably serves customers, and makes the world a little bit better in the process" (Tom Peters, New York Times bestselling author of In Search of Excellence). More/less

Disrupted
Science / Medicine / Technology
Hachette
November 2017
ISBN 9780316306096
272 pages
$16.00, INSTORE
Buy nowINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The best book about Silicon Valley today."--Los Angeles Times "Hysterical.
"--Kara Swisher, Recode Now in paperback, Dan Lyons' "hilarious and eye-opening" (Business Insider) bestseller about trying -- and failing -- to reinvent himself at age 50 at a software start-up populated by millennial co-workers and inept bosses. For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. He had long reported on the tech bonanza. Why not join it? HubSpot, flush with $100 million in venture capital, offered Dan a pile of stock options. What could go wrong? With a cast of characters that includes fad-chasing venture capitalists, "content farm" bloggers and sales bros, social climbers and sociopaths, Disrupted is "an eye-opening and gut-busting account of the maddening world of startup excess, hubris and groupthink" (Mashable) and "you couldn't have written a tastier ending, even for HBO" (Dwight Garner, New York Times). Mixed in with Lyons' "hilarious and terrifying" (Los Angeles Times) tale is a trenchant analysis of the start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them, a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money on lavish perks, where workers become disposable widgets, and ageism and other bias runs rampant. More/less