"CNN's former senior tech correspondent shares her front-row seat on the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and other new-media empires—and the geeks turned entrepreneurs who founded them." — People
“Fans of Brotopia or anyone who wants a backstage pass to Zuckerberg and some of the biggest co.’s of our time, you’ll devour this.” — The Skimm
“A candid account of tech’s evolution in the 2010s, a period of absurd revenue streams, noteworthy innovation and alarming scandals, Special Characters is also a relatable self-portrait of an ambitious, introspective person’s arrival at a professional crossroads.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Inspiring on the personal level while somewhat chilling on the societal one.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Anyone eager for a glimpse inside the worlds of technology and network television journalism will enjoy Laurie Segall's candid and engaging memoir. Segall's energetic chronicle of her rise from an entry-level position at CNN to the network's senior tech correspondent is both an engrossing coming-of-age story and a revealing cautionary tale of the power Silicon Valley wields over modern life.” — Shelf Awareness
“In this memoir, [Segall] recalls her own coming of age among the titans who helped shape the world we live in now, and shares unparalleled insight about finding herself amidst a new guard of Masters of the Universe." — Town & Country
“Segall reflects on her years covering the likes of Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. She also gives the backstory behind some of her more memorable adventures.” — Fortune
“Special Characters is a wild ride through a transformative decade that pulls back the curtain on the exclusive world of billionaire founders, entrepreneurs and mainstream media. With wit and candor, Laurie Segall offers an intimate account of a young woman finding her voice in the boys' clubs of Silicon Valley and cable news. Laurie Segall's memoir is funny, charming, and sincere, and a staggeringly good book.” — Sophia Amoruso, New York Times bestselling author of #Girlboss
“With Special Characters, Laurie Segall rips away the filters and brings to life both the glamour and grit of her journey from newsroom assistant to CNN Senior Technology Correspondent during the second wave tech revolution. Like the Carrie Bradshaw of technology journalism—her storytelling is sharp, sophisticated, and illuminating. This book is a seductive, insightful coming-of-age story of both Segall and the world as we know it.” — Nicole Lapin, New York Times bestselling author of Rich Bitch
“Laurie Segall's memoir is a witty, surprising and page-turning take on the grueling but exhilarating journey of becoming a television news reporter who finds herself covering the most powerful industry in the world — technology. For anyone trying to find themselves, her tale might just give you the courage to make hard choices and take the road not taken, with the hope of finding what you've only dared to dream." — Emily Chang, author of Brotopia
“Special Characters is a must-read—it is both a mesmerizing memoir and an enthralling whirlwind ride through the highs and lows of the tech industry.” — Susan Fowler, author of Whistleblower
In this memoir, [Segall] recalls her own coming of age among the titans who helped shape the world we live in now, and shares unparalleled insight about finding herself amidst a new guard of Masters of the Universe."
“Fans of Brotopia or anyone who wants a backstage pass to Zuckerberg and some of the biggest co.’s of our time, you’ll devour this.
"CNN's former senior tech correspondent shares her front-row seat on the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and other new-media empires—and the geeks turned entrepreneurs who founded them."
With Special Characters, Laurie Segall rips away the filters and brings to life both the glamour and grit of her journey from newsroom assistant to CNN Senior Technology Correspondent during the second wave tech revolution. Like the Carrie Bradshaw of technology journalism—her storytelling is sharp, sophisticated, and illuminating. This book is a seductive, insightful coming-of-age story of both Segall and the world as we know it.
Special Characters is a wild ride through a transformative decade that pulls back the curtain on the exclusive world of billionaire founders, entrepreneurs and mainstream media. With wit and candor, Laurie Segall offers an intimate account of a young woman finding her voice in the boys' clubs of Silicon Valley and cable news. Laurie Segall's memoir is funny, charming, and sincere, and a staggeringly good book.
Segall reflects on her years covering the likes of Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. She also gives the backstory behind some of her more memorable adventures.
Laurie Segall's memoir is a witty, surprising and page-turning take on the grueling but exhilarating journey of becoming a television news reporter who finds herself covering the most powerful industry in the world — technology. For anyone trying to find themselves, her tale might just give you the courage to make hard choices and take the road not taken, with the hope of finding what you've only dared to dream."
A candid account of tech’s evolution in the 2010s, a period of absurd revenue streams, noteworthy innovation and alarming scandals, Special Characters is also a relatable self-portrait of an ambitious, introspective person’s arrival at a professional crossroads.
Anyone eager for a glimpse inside the worlds of technology and network television journalism will enjoy Laurie Segall's candid and engaging memoir. Segall's energetic chronicle of her rise from an entry-level position at CNN to the network's senior tech correspondent is both an engrossing coming-of-age story and a revealing cautionary tale of the power Silicon Valley wields over modern life.
A candid account of tech’s evolution in the 2010s, a period of absurd revenue streams, noteworthy innovation and alarming scandals, Special Characters is also a relatable self-portrait of an ambitious, introspective person’s arrival at a professional crossroads.
Special Characters is a must-read—it is both a mesmerizing memoir and an enthralling whirlwind ride through the highs and lows of the tech industry.
10/01/2021
With In Love, NBA/NBCC finalist Bloom (White Houses) takes us on a painful journey as her husband retires from his job, withdraws from life, and finally receives a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's; she recalls both the love they experienced and the love it took to stand by him as he ended his life on his own terms. In The Beauty of Dusk, New York Times columnist Bruni contemplates aging, illness, and the end of the road as he describes a rare stroke that deprived him of sight in his right eye, even as he learns that he could lose sight in his left eye as well. In Aurelia, Aurélia, Lannan Literary Award-winning novelist Davis (The Silk Road) considers how living and imagining interact in a book grounded in the joys and troubles of her marriage and her husband's recent death. Raised in an ultra-orthodox Jewish household and married off at age 19 to a man she barely knew, Haart made a Brazen decision more than two decades later, surreptitiously earning enough money to break away, then entering the fashion world, and finally becoming CEO and co-owner of the modeling agency Elite World Group. Adding to all those paw-poundingly wonderful canine celebrations that keep coming our way, And a Dog Called Fig is Dublin IMPAC long-listed Canadian novelist Humphreys's paean to dogs as the ideal companion to the writing life. In The Tears of a Man Flow Inward, Burundi-born, U.S.-based Pushcart/Whiting honoree Irankunda recalls how his family and fellow villagers survived the 13-year civil war in his country—with the help, crucially, of his kind and brave mother, a Mushingantahe, or chosen village leader—and how the war destroyed Burundi's culture and traditions. As private investigator Krouse explains in Tell Me Everything, she accepted a case of alleged sexual assault at a party for college football players and recruits despite reservations owing to her own experiences with sexual violence, then saw the case become a landmark civil rights case. In Red Paint, LaPointe, a Salish poet and nonfiction author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes, explains how she has sought to reclaim a place in the world for herself and her people by blending her passion for the punk rock of the Pacific Northwest and her desire to honor spiritual traditions and particularly a namesake great-grandmother who fought to preserve the Lushootseed language. Undoubtedly, book critic Newton has Ancestor Trouble: a forebear accused of witchcraft in Puritan Massachusetts, a grandfather married 13 times, a father who praised slavery and obsessed over the purity of his bloodlines, and a frantic, cat-rescuing mother who performed exorcisms, all of which made her wonder how she would turn out. In How Do I Un-Remember This? comedian/screenwriter Pellegrino draws on his big-hit podcast Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino (over 13.5 million downloads in 2020) as he renegotiates 1990s pop culture and moments funny, embarrassing, or painful to limn growing up closeted in a conservative Ohio community. In Black Ops, Prado portrays a life that ranges from his family's fleeing the Cuban revolution when he was seven to his retirement from the CIA as the equivalent of a two-star general while also detailing the agency's involvement over the decades in numerous "shadow wars" (200,000-copy first printing). Segall came of age as a reporter just as tech entrepreneurs began to soar, and as she interviewed these Special Characters, she also rose to become an award-winning investigative reporter and (until 2019) CNN's senior tech correspondent (75,000-copy first printing).
2021-12-14
How an ambitious young journalist came of age in the tech sector and made her mark at CNN.
In the economic dark days of 2009, then-23-year-old Segall wrote her first story for CNN.com, “about how a small business was trying to make do in the global recession by opening up a topless coffee shop in Maine.” Elsewhere in the recession, she asserts, "a new creative energy" was emerging, represented by a group of brainy misfits who developed products that remain household names—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Tinder—as well as some that fizzled and were forgotten. Collaborating with a few women colleagues who became close friends, Segall plotted, networked, and scrapped her way from transcribing tapes and typing chyrons to telling the story of tech on-screen. In 2010, she took vacation days and paid her own way to SXSW, where she pretended to be a producer and interviewed the whiz kids. Seven years later, she was there to premiere her own series, Mostly Human. As the kooky fun of the early days gave way to bots, hacking, fake news, and revenge porn, the author uncovered the Boston Marathon bomber's deleted Instagram account, documented the fallout of the Ashley Madison leak, and landed the first interview with Mark Zuckerberg after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Segall ran into many obstacles—mainly her own persistent impostor syndrome and entrenched sexism at CNN—but whenever she faced rejection, she and her friends dropped everything and blasted Janis Joplin's "Another Piece of My Heart." A few downsides: The prose is only serviceable, some points are belabored, and romantic relationships seem to take as long to die on the page as they did in real life (a fight over who gets to keep Alexa is about as juicy as it gets).
Inspiring on the personal level while somewhat chilling on the societal one.
