“It is a fact that man can't fly.” The Washington Post concluded the latter in an editorial published around the beginning of the 20th century. Few disagreed with the Post. Indeed, in his excellent biography of Orville and Wilbur Wright, titled The Wright Brothers, David McCullough wrote of how the “would-be ‘conquerors of the air' and their strange or childish flying machines” served “as a continuous source of popular comic relief” to the wise. For one to be a flying enthusiast back then was for that same person to be “mocked as a crank, a crackpot,” and seemingly with good reason. Of course man couldn't fly…
The immense skepticism that preceded the Wright brothers' pursuit of the seemingly impossible came to mind a lot, and for a variety of reasons, during my read of Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou's innuendo-filled bestseller about Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes, Bad Blood. Billed as an unputdownable account of “Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup”, Bad Blood mostly amounted to a string of less-than-shocking anecdotes about life in a pressure-filled start-up.
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