Sarah Lacy book reviews: A Trio of Nice Words

More Reviews: A Trio of Nice Words

More good reviews for "Brilliant Crazy Cocky" are coming in. The most stunning may have been this simple Tweet from Rafat Ali-- a blogger who has spent years writing some of the most cruel, vitriolic things about my work. If Ali had anything nice to say about this book, it must be good. Thanks, dude.

I woke up this morning to two more exciting mentions. Milo Yiannopoulos of the Telegraph wrote an amazing piece that praises the book at the same time it takes down a lot of tech journalism in the world today. (In defense of those reporters, most don't get to do this kind of reporting, because it's insanely expensive. If my husband and I hadn't invested most of our savings in the book, one publisher hadn't been crazy enough to agree to publish it and the Kauffman Foundation hadn't given me a generous grant, I wouldn't have been able to either.) A snippet:

"The tech blogosphere, so goes the current thinking, is descending into an interminable racket characterised by ridiculous fights over preposterous non-stories.

Um, no. Because, on the other side of the divide, there are some who still believe that the readers deserve better. Who think that even though we're writing about the internet, we should still make an effort to be entertaining and erudite. Who do their homework, value their readers and - if you'll forgive the expression - "add value". It might take a little longer to find them - and there is no single publication of consistently good quality in this regard - but they are out there.

Sarah Lacy is one of those writers. She recently wrote the best post on TechCrunch for months, a fascinating survey of Silicon Valley "mafias", and her latest book, Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky, is the result of forty weeks travelling around Asia, Africa and South America, conducting an exhaustive survey of entrepreneurialism in emerging economies.

The results are gripping: a fabulous paean to hard-core entrepreneurial spirit, the sort of lunacy, hubris and naked ambition that characterises the Valley, that Lacy so obviously admires and that the entrepreneurs she discovers on her travels have by the bucketload. Whether she's stabbing virtual bunnies in China or exploring the consequences of aid for African start-ups, Lacy always has an eye out for courageous stories of those mildly insane people who want to reshape the world around them."

Equally as exciting was some East Coast Media love. I made this week's Approval Matrix for New York Magazine, between "highbrow" and "brilliant." Thank God I'm across the matrix from Heidi Montag and Charlie Sheen. I'm really grateful for all of the kind words.