Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

In the tradition of Janet Malcolm's THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER and Robert Greene's THE 48 LAWS OF POWER, author Ryan Holiday examines the case that rocked the media world—and the billionaire mastermind behind it
In 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley-vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private.
This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental—it had been masterminded by Thiel.
For years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the...