How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University

By Theo Baker

"Poignant, maddening, and genuinely hilarious, How to Rule the World is to be devoured--and fast, before Stanford buys up and sets fire to every copy. (Talk about a burn book )" --Mark Leibovich, #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Town

Winner of the George Polk Award for his investigation that brought down Stanford's president, Theo Baker offers a revelatory and gripping account of Silicon Valley hubris

Slush funds. Shell companies. Yacht parties. This is life for Silicon Valley's favored teenagers.

Seventeen-year-old Theo Baker showed up for freshman year at Stanford University as a tech-obsessed coder. It seemed like paradise. There were Rodin sculptures next to nuclear laboratories and inventors lounging with Olympians. But Baker soon discovered a culture that embraced corner-cutting, that vested infinite excess and access in the hands of kids with few safeguards to catch bad behavior.

Stanford, he realized, was less a school than a business. Its annual budget was nearly twice that of Harvard or Yale and higher than those of 116 countries. The product? Students. Especially those special few identified as the next trillion-dollar startup founders. For them, there were secret societies, "pre-idea" funding offers, and social calls from billionaires, all with the expectation that these geniuses would soon join the ruling elite.

At the helm of this business was Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a superstar neuroscientist and wealthy biotech executive. But when Baker joined the student newspaper and started poking around the Stanford president's record, he discovered never-reported allegations of research misconduct in studies published across two decades bearing Tessier-Lavigne's name.

Only one month into college and thousands of miles from home, Baker began receiving anonymous letters, going on stakeouts, and tracking down confidential sources. High-powered lawyers and public relations teams were hired to attack his reporting. By the end of the year, Tessier-Lavigne was out as president.

This is the incredible story of how a reluctant teenage reporter uncovered a scandal that shook the scientific world and became front-page news across the country. It is also an unprecedented inside view of the students learning to rule the world--and what they're learning from those who already do.

How to Rule the World is a shocking, hilarious, and moving debut, showcasing Silicon Valley's training ground as never before.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0593832833
• ISBN13: 9780593832837
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.3"