Description: Praise for The Circle "A vivid, roaring dissent to the companies that have coaxed us to disgorge every thought and action onto the Web . . . Carries the potential to change how the world views its addicted, compliant thrall to all things digital. If you work in Silicon Valley, or just care about what goes on there, you need to pay attention." --Dennis K. Berman, The Wall Street Journal "Fascinating . . . Eggers appears to run on pure adrenaline, and has as many ideas pouring out of him as the entrepreneurs pitching their inventions in The Circle . . . [A] novel of ideas . . . about the social construction and deconstruction of privacy, and about the increasing corporate ownership of privacy, and about the effects such ownership may have on the nature of Western democracy . . . Like Melville''s Pequod and Stephen King''s Overlook Hotel, the Circle is a combination of physical container, financial system, spiritual state, and dramatis personae, intended to represent America, or at least a powerful segment of it . . . The Circlers'' social etiquette is as finely calibrated as anything in Jane Austen . . . Eggers treats his material with admirable inventiveness and gusto . . . the language ripples and morphs . . . It''s an entertainment, but a challenging one." --Margaret Atwood, The New York Review of Books "A parable about the perils of life in a digital age in which our personal data is increasingly collected, sifted and monetized, an age of surveillance and Big Data, in which privacy is obsolete, and Maoist collectivism is the order of the day. Using his fluent prose and instinctive storytelling gifts, Mr. Eggers does a nimble, and sometimes very funny, job of sending up technophiles'' navet, self-interest and misguided idealism. As the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier has done in several groundbreaking nonfiction books, Mr. Eggers reminds us how digital utopianism can lead to the datafication of our daily lives, how a belief in the wisdom of the crowd can lead to mob rule, how the embrace of ''the hive mind'' can lead to a diminution of the individual. The adventures of Mr. Eggers''s heroine, Mae Holland, an ambitious new hire at the company, provide an object lesson in the dangers of drinking the Silicon Valley Kool-Aid and becoming a full-time digital ninja . . . Never less than entertaining . . . Eggers is such an engaging, tactile writer that the reader happily follows him wherever he''s going . . . A fun and inventive read." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The particular charm and power of Eggers''s book . . . could be described as ''topical'' or ''timely,'' though those pedestrian words do not nearly capture its imaginative vision . . . Simply a great story, with a fascinating protagonist, sharply drawn supporting characters and an exciting, unpredictable plot . . . As scary as the story''s implications will be to some readers, the reading experience is pure pleasure." --Hugo Lindgren, The New York Times Magazine "Eggers is a literary polymath . . . The Circle is funny in its skewering of Internet culture. Holland obsessively tallies the reach of her Twitter-like Zings and enthuses about a benefit for needy children that raises not money but 2.3 million ''smiles'' (think Facebook ''likes''). The Circle''s buildings are named for epochs, so at her first party Holland gets her wine from the Industrial Revolution . . . The ideas behind "The Circle" are compelling and deeply contemporary. Holland is an everywoman, a twentysomething believer in Internet culture untroubled by the massive centralization and monetization of information, ubiquitous video surveillance and corporate invasions of privacy. Compare that to A Hologram for the King , in which a middle-aged man thoughtfully but powerlessly observes America''s economic decline, realizing that his efforts to participate in globalization led to his own obsolescence. The two books together are saying something foreboding about America''s place in the world: We have traded making physical things for a glossy, meaningless online culture that leaves us vulnerable to those who see that information -- in the form of data, video feeds, or our own consumer desires -- is power." --Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times "You can''t really write a 1984 for our times, because 1984 is still the 1984 of our times. But one could think of Dave Eggers'' . . . new novel The Circle as a timely and potent appendix to it. The crux of The Circle is that Big Brother is still haunting us, but in an incarnation that''s both more genial and more insidious. We have met Big Brother, and he is us . . . In The Circle Eggers has set his style and pace to technothriller: the writing is brisk and spare and efficient . . . When I finished The Circle I felt a heightened awareness of social media and the way it''s remaking our world into a living hell of constant and universal mutual observation." --Lev Grossman, Time "You may find yourself so engrossed in Dave Eggers''s futuristic novel, The Circle , that you forget about Facebook entirely. And by the last pages, you may think twice before logging on again." --John Freeman, O, The Oprah Magazine "Bravely, audaciously . . . [Eggers] takes on the online world in The Circle, a provocative novel named for the world''s most powerful Internet firm. Set in the not-so-distant future, the novel is part satire, part corporate thriller. But mostly it''s a cautionary tale about threats to privacy, freedom and democracy." --Bob Minsesheimer, USA Today "Page-turning. . . . The social message of the novel is clear, but Eggers expertly weaves it into an elegantly told, compulsively readable parable for the 21st century. . . . What may be the most haunting discovery about The Circle, however, is readers'' recognition that they share the same technology-driven mentality that brings the novel''s characters to the brink of dysfunction. We too want to know everything by watching, monitoring, commenting, and interacting, and the force of Eggers''s richly allusive prose lies in his ability to expose the potential hazards of that impulse." --Laura Christensen, Vanity Fair "In this taut, claustrophobic corporate thriller, Eggers comes down hard on the culture of digital over-sharing, creating a very-near-future dystopia in which all that is not forbidden isrequired. . . . Eggers has a keen eye for context, and the great strength of The Circle lies in its observations about the way instant, asynchronous communication has damaged our personal relationships. . . . A speculative morality tale in the vein of George Orwell . . . We go on using the social media platforms that have been used against us; we post geo-tagged photos that could lead potential criminals straight to our private homes and our children''s preschools, and we do all of this with full knowledge of the possible consequences. We have closed our eyes and given our consent. Everyone else is doing it. In the digital age, it is better to be unsafe than to be leftout." --G. Willow Wilson, San Francisco Chronicle "Eggers surveys our privacy-annihilating, social media-infested world, recoils in horror at the inevitable consequences, and unleashes a primal scream: Enough! Stop! Stop liking and sharing and tweeting and texting! Stop it all! Readers who share Eggers'' concerns about the Facebook-opticon, the surveillance state that leaves no shred of daily life unscrutinized, this superficial, hollow sense of community spaned by digital connectivity will flock to stand before this brave rallying flag. . . . The world that the Circle is delivering to the online masses is very much our world. This isn''t science fiction . . . We need a legion of Dave Eggers in the world today, calling out the dangers." --Andrew Leonard, Salon "Eggers''s works pulse with life . . . The Circle pushes his art even further . . . Eggers''s work, part dark comedy, part sobering glimpse into the near-future, stuns for two reasons: Mae''s humanity and compassion are apparent even as she helps erode our civil liberties; and two, it doesn''t feel like science fiction. It feels like the next horrific--but very plausible--small step for mankind." --Josh Davis, Time Out New York, five stars "You can''t read The Circle, Dave Eggers''s novel about a powerful internet company, and not recognize the book''s dystopian vision in our own obsessions with sharing and social media. The novel, set in the near future, is an engaging mix of social satire and cautionary tale . . . captures the perils of the internet -- and, in particular, the over-the-top utopianism sometimes espoused by technology executives -- more than any other novel of recent years . . . both hilarious and foreboding." --Allan Hoffman, The New Jersey Star-Ledger "Ripped from recent headlines about privacy, technology and social media . . . A book that begins as a lighthearted cautionary tale grows into a claustrophobic portrait of relentless effort to achieve the culmination of ''closing the Circle.''" --Richard Galant, CNN "Entertaining . . . A sense of horror finally arrives near the end of the book, coming . . . through the power of Eggers''s writing . . . The final scene is chilling." --Ellen Ullman, The New York Times Book Review "Gripping . . . Set in the not-too-distant future, Eggers'' story takes us inside a shiny-happy California-based medi

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