If attention is the new oil, Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the perceptible impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dot com crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when seemed that New York City, rather than Silicon Valley, might become tech's center of gravity. There, Nick Denton's merry hand of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti's sunnier team at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed News's editor in chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity underscored by dark wit. Traffic explores one of the great ironics of our time: The internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. People like Stove Bannon and Andrew Breitbart initially seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah were the stars. But today, anyone might wonder of the opposite wasn't the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading.