This book was so good! I liked some parts better than others, and it went a lot of directions I wasn't expecting, but overall I found it very interesting and useful. There was a great deal of history, and I loved how it was so situated in the Bay Area.

I'm finding it hard to summarize key takeaways; perhaps this is because I listened to the audiobook and may have in some parts focused on it less than I would have preferred, or maybe this is because of the book itself somehow. But I read this for a book club so I'm excited to talk about it with others so they can refresh my mind on the parts I really want to remember.

My favorite passage was:

When the language of advertising and personal branding enjoins you to “be yourself," what it really means is “be more yourself," where “yourself” is a consistent and recognizable pattern of habits, desires, and drives that can be more easily advertised to and appropriated, like units of capital. In fact, I don’t know what a personal brand is other than a reliable, unchanging pattern of snap judgments: “I like this” and “I don’t like this," with little room for ambiguity or contradiction.