Palo Alto

A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

By: Malcolm Harris

Narrated by: Patrick Harrison

The history of Silicon Valley, from railroads to microchips, is an “extraordinary” story of disruption and destruction, told for the first time in this comprehensive, jaw-dropping narrative (Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth).

Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing. Palo Alto is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system.

In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the "tragedy of the commons," racial genetics, and "broken windows" theory. The Internet and computers, too. It's a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century. PALO ALTO is an urgent and visionary history of the way we live now, one that ends with a clear-eyed, radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.

Critic reviews

“Malcolm Harris's singular and brilliant PALO ALTO is a geologic survey of the bedrock of the imperial violence that lies beneath the surface of some of the country's wealthiest ZIP Codes. The formations it follows stretch outward across the globe, to Asia, Europe, across the Americas and to the rest of the United States. In the end, the book provides not so much an account of strict cause and effect—the familiar history of the robber barons and tech tycoons—but a core sample of the thorough-going greed and pillage at the heart of American history: the expropriation, the violence, and the guilt that seep upward through the soil of neoliberalism's most fruitful plain.”—Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and African American Studies at Harvard University and author of The Broken Heart of America

"Extraordinary. In lucid, personal, often funny, and always insightful prose, Malcolm Harris finds the driving thrust of reaction not in capitalism’s left-behind regions but in its vanguard: California, and specifically Silicon Valley. We have not yet felt the full force of the shit storm that the titans of tech have been conjuring. We soon will. If you want to understand what’s coming, you need to read this book."

—Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of Myth

“Harris painstakingly connects literature, geography, and economics to understand Palo Alto's history and its relationship to capitalism…Readers interested in U.S. history, particularly pertaining to capitalism and technology, will find an engaging and clear-eyed Silicon Valley tale of a small city with global importance.”—BOOKLIST

The Ideal Silicon Valley Book

A must read for ambitious tech entrepreneurs who wish to go settle in Palo Alto and take part in the final Gold Rush

Logical left-leaning view. On point

Fantastic information. The history and analysis covered in this book is second to none. I’ve already recommended it to 10 people, some of which are madly in love with Capitalist. Here’s to making them rethink and recalibrate their orientation.

Historically thorough

Detailed, well, researched history, delivered from a clearly stated point of view. The author makes no bones about his left word bias, but does not let his context interfere with reporting facts. I consider this book to be an excellent source of information for someone who does not mind getting into the weeds of detail.

bold, extensively sourced theory of capitalism…

with Palo Alto as the example / major practicioner. i feel like i have a dozen more boons to read from Harrison’s sources before i can even get my head around how much of his theory seems sound.

twist at the end

I enjoyed the history in the book. maybe I wasn't listening closely enough to the disdain of capitalism throughout but I was honestly a little shocked by the twist in the last chapter and its recommendations