John Carreyrou is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who spent two decades at The Wall Street Journal before joining The New York Times in 2023. He is best known for a single, extraordinary piece of reporting: the multi-year investigation that exposed Theranos, the blood-testing startup once valued at $9 billion, as one of the largest corporate frauds in Silicon Valley history. That investigation became Bad Blood (2018), his first and so far only book.
Unlike most authors on this site, Carreyrou doesn’t have a backlist to work through. What he has instead is one of the most airtight pieces of investigative nonfiction of the last decade, and a body of surrounding work — the original WSJ articles, a follow-up podcast, and two screen adaptations — that together tell the full story of how the Theranos fraud was uncovered and how it finally collapsed.
By Lisanne Swart · 1 book · Investigative Journalism · Updated August 2026
Quick answer
John Carreyrou has written one book to date: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018), which won the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award and was later adapted into the Hulu miniseries The Dropout. He also released a follow-up podcast, Bad Blood: The Final Chapter, covering Elizabeth Holmes’s 2022 fraud trial.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
John Carreyrou · 2018
In 2014, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was worth an estimated $4.5 billion on paper, celebrated as the next Steve Jobs for a company that claimed to run hundreds of medical tests from a single drop of finger-pricked blood. Carreyrou, then an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, began pulling on a thread from a tip in 2015 and found a company built almost entirely on fabrication — test results that were unreliable or outright dangerous, a culture of surveillance and intimidation against employees who raised concerns, and a founder who lied systematically to investors, regulators, and patients. Holmes tried to have the story killed through her lawyer, threats, and pressure on Rupert Murdoch, a major Theranos investor who also owned the Journal. Carreyrou published anyway.
This is the gold standard of the “insider fraud exposed” genre — meticulously sourced, structurally relentless, and written with the pace of a thriller despite being built entirely from documents, depositions, and on-the-record interviews. If you want to understand what it actually takes to report a story that powerful people are trying to kill, this is the book.
“When you are surrounded by people who are quick to tell you what you want to hear, it can be difficult to accept that you’re not always right.”
In 2021, Carreyrou released Bad Blood: The Final Chapter, a limited podcast series covering Elizabeth Holmes’s criminal fraud trial from inside the courtroom. It picks up exactly where the book leaves off and functions as a direct sequel — the same reporting instincts applied to watching the story reach its legal conclusion, with Holmes ultimately convicted on four counts of fraud in January 2022.
Beyond the book: on screen
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019), directed by Alex Gibney, is the documentary version of the same story, built substantially on Carreyrou’s reporting, with extensive archival Theranos footage that makes Holmes’s manipulation visible in a way the book can only describe.
The Dropout (2022), a Hulu miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, dramatizes the full arc — Carreyrou himself is a character in it, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach. It takes more creative license than the documentary but captures the psychological texture of the fraud in a way straight reporting doesn’t always reach.
Watch: John Carreyrou discusses Bad Blood
A full-length author talk recorded at Politics and Prose shortly after the book’s release, where Carreyrou walks through how he built the investigation and what it took to get Theranos sources to talk.
If Bad Blood is what drew you in
If you want more corporate fraud
My best investigative journalism books list has the closest relatives — reporting that took down something powerful through sheer documented persistence.
If it’s the insider-access style you want
Read Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. Completely different tone and era, but the same commitment to getting dangerously close to a subject that would rather not be reported on.
If you want the full non-fiction shelf
My best non-fiction books list situates Bad Blood alongside the rest of the books that get inside a world and report from there.
Frequently asked questions about John Carreyrou’s books
How many books has John Carreyrou written?
John Carreyrou has written one book: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018), about the rise and collapse of the blood-testing startup Theranos. He has said he wants to continue writing nonfiction books, but as of this writing Bad Blood remains his only published book.
Is Bad Blood a true story?
Yes. Bad Blood is a work of nonfiction, based on Carreyrou’s multi-year investigation for The Wall Street Journal, court documents, internal Theranos records, and interviews with more than 150 people, including more than 60 former Theranos employees. Elizabeth Holmes was later convicted on four counts of fraud in January 2022.
Did Elizabeth Holmes try to stop Bad Blood or the original reporting?
Yes. Before the original Wall Street Journal articles were published in 2015, Theranos’s lawyers — led by David Boies — sent legal threats, and Holmes personally lobbied Rupert Murdoch, then a major Theranos investor and the owner of the Journal’s parent company, to have the story killed. Murdoch declined to interfere, and the Journal published. Theranos also placed some former employees under surveillance and pressured sources not to talk to Carreyrou.
Is there a movie or TV show based on Bad Blood?
Yes, two. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) is a documentary directed by Alex Gibney, built substantially on Carreyrou’s reporting. The Dropout (2022) is a scripted Hulu miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, in which Carreyrou himself appears as a character, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach.
What happened to Elizabeth Holmes after Bad Blood was published?
Theranos dissolved in 2018, the same year Bad Blood was published. Holmes was indicted on federal wire fraud charges in 2018 and convicted on four of eleven counts in January 2022. She was sentenced to just over 11 years in prison and began serving her sentence in 2023. Carreyrou covered the trial in detail in his follow-up podcast, Bad Blood: The Final Chapter.
What awards has John Carreyrou won?
John Carreyrou is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner — for Explanatory Reporting as part of a team covering corporate scandals, and for Investigative Reporting for a series on Medicare fraud. Bad Blood won the 2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, and his Theranos reporting separately won the George Polk Award, the Gerald Loeb Award, and the Barlett & Steele Award.
Written by Lisanne Swart
Lisanne curates books for curious readers at lisanneswart.com, publishing original reading lists, author deep-dives, and honest recommendations since 2021. Read more about Lisanne.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
