American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford Hardcover - 2019

From the rear cover

"...readable and entertaining. . . . De Wolk not only introduces a much more believable Stanford, warts and all, but also does a great job of showing how his legacy and reputation was managed, massaged and sanitized after his death."--True West

"American Disruptor provides a dense but swift-moving primer on Stanford's rise from tavern owner's son to tycoon."--Stanford Magazine

"The original tech bro? Leland Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, emerges as a spiritual forefather of Silicon Valley-style monopolism, exploitation and conflicts of interest in this dramatic new biography by Bay Area journalism professor Roland De Wolk."--KQED Arts

"...[a] superb new account of Stanford's 'preposterous career and life.'"--Berkeleyside

"...[Stanford] was an uneducated anti-intellectual, yet defined himself as "a technologist" and wanted Stanford University to thrive as a trade school. He played a major role in vaulting America into peak ascendancy, yet had few qualms bilking taxpayers out of millions of dollars in the process (before going on to be a U.S. Senator). And those are just a few of the threads that De Wolk pulls to weave an engaging and highly relevant portrait of a profoundly influential, turbulent and, yes--"scandalous" life."--The Six Fifty

"Leland Stanford was once a man, but he has become a monument. Roland De Wolk has the wit to recognize that by recovering the man, he can tell us not only about Stanford but a great deal about the university that made the man into a monument. The book could not come at a better time. Today Stanford University rides the horse of entrepreneurship as hard as Leland Stanford raced his famous trotting horses. This is an entertaining and rollicking biography."--Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Stanford University

"Deeply researched and richly detailed, American Disruptor chronicles the life of Leland Stanford and the wide-open world in which he lived. From Gold Rush days to completion of the first transcontinental railroad to the founding of Stanford University, Roland De Wolk skillfully unfolds this narrative about a bold, darkly contradictory man who, in his way, constantly made history."--Barry Siegel, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Dreamers and Schemers

"American Disruptor is beautifully written and fully researched with analysis and documentation. This is the story of Leland Stanford, an early failure, an entrepreneur, and the visionary that linked America's East and West with a ribbon of steel. Stanford was the enigmatic serial entrepreneur who laid the foundation for Stanford University and the world-impacting entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley."--John McLaughlin, President, Silicon Valley Historical Association