Gary Rivlin
AUTHOR

Gary Rivlin

Business & Careers | Biographies & Memoirs | Money & Finance
Tap the gear icon above to manage new release emails.
I'll confess that in high school I was the type more likely to read the Cliff Notes than the assigned work. I was going to be an engineer; who cared about books? But for a requirement in college I took a literature course and I've been grateful ever since. I joke that I'm a self-taught reader, having pretty much started at age 19. Politics and social issues propelled me into journalism. I felt like I had something to say so I started to write. In college I always enjoyed reading a great alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader. I began contributing to the Reader and eventually earned a staff job there writing about Chicago politics. That led to my first book, Fire on the Prairie, in which I tell the story of race politics at work in every big city by telling the tale of Chicago during the 1980s, a particularly brutal racial time in that city’s history. Youth violence was the subject of my second book, Drive-By. In that work, I introduce readers to the range of characters and issues at work in a single drive-by shooting that left a 13-year-old dead and put three teenagers in prison for murder. With my third book, The Plot to Get Bill Gates, I returned to my early tech roots. I left the book world for about a decade. I started writing for a range of magazines, from Wired to the New York Times Magazine to GQ. At the start of 2004, I took a staff position with The New York Times. As terrific experience as that was, I’m very happy to be returning to books and talking about my latest work, BROKE, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. – How the Working Poor Became Big Business.
Read more Read less

Try Audible membership today. Start enjoying the benefits.

Try Audible for free with an audiobook of your choice.
Try Premium Plus free
Automatically renews at AUD $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Becoming a Venture Capitalist

Most popular
View Details

Most Popular

Product list
  • AI Valley cover art

    • AI Valley

    • Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence
    • By: Gary Rivlin
    • Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
    • Length: 11 hrs
    • Release date: 25-03-2025
    • Language: English
    • Not rated yet

    Non-member price: $35.49 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: $35.49 or 1 Credit

    Pre-order: Free with 30-day trial
  • Saving Main Street cover art

    Non-member price: $26.99 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: $26.99 or 1 Credit

    Try for $0.00
  • Becoming an Ethical Hacker cover art

    Non-member price: $16.99 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: $16.99 or 1 Credit

    Try for $0.00
  • The Godfather of Silicon Valley cover art

    Non-member price: $16.99 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: $16.99 or 1 Credit

    Try for $0.00
  • Broke, USA cover art

    • Broke, USA

    • From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. - How the Working Poor Became Big Business
    • By: Gary Rivlin
    • Narrated by: Scott Sowers
    • Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
    • Release date: 24-08-2010
    • Language: English
    • 3 out of 5 stars 1 rating

    Non-member price: $27.99 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: $27.99 or 1 Credit

    Try for $0.00
  • Fire on the Prairie cover art

    • Fire on the Prairie

    • Harold Washington, Chicago Politics, and the Roots of the Obama Presidency
    • By: Gary Rivlin
    • Narrated by: George Orlando
    • Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
    • Release date: 15-02-2013
    • Language: English
    • Not rated yet

    Non-member price: $27.99 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: $27.99 or 1 Credit

    Try for $0.00
  • Drive By cover art

    Non-member price: $27.99 or 1 Credit

    Sale price: $27.99 or 1 Credit

    Try for $0.00