How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University

In this incendiary account, debut author Baker details how a tip he received as a freshman student journalist at Stanford University led to the resignation of university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Baker, the son of political reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, enrolled at Stanford in 2022 planning to study computer science. He joined the student newspaper as a hobby, but it became something more when a friend alerted Baker to a years-old blog post suggesting that one of Tessier-Lavigne’s published neurobiology papers included a falsified image. Pulling on that thread, Baker reported a series of stories alleging that Tessier-Lavigne was complicit in publishing deceptive and misleading scientific research on multiple occasions. The university assembled a committee to investigate Baker’s claims, and in 2023, Tessier-Lavigne resigned from his post—shortly after Baker became the youngest recipient of a Polk Award. Far from braggadocious, Baker is frank about the toll his reporting took on his social life and his faith in higher education; the book is at its most fascinating when detailing his disillusionment with the “rot” at the heart of academia that prizes the appearance of success over the truth. It’s a confident testament to the power of independent journalism from an author with a bright future. Agent: Raphael Sagalyn, CAA. (May)