Jimmy Soni is an American author and former managing editor of The Huffington Post . ^{[1] [2]} He is best known for A Mind at Play , his biography of Claude Shannon and The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley.

Contents

• Background
• Career
• Written works
• Bibliography
• References

Background

Soni was born in Toulouse, France to Indian parents from Rajasthan and was raised in Chicago, Illinois. ^[3] He attended Duke University and graduated in 2007. ^[4] During his time at Duke he was chairman of the honors council and vice president of student government. ^{[5] [6]}

Career

Soni became the managing editor at The Huffington Post in January 2012. ^[7] Previously he had worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and Company, as well as a speech writer at the office of the Mayor of the District of Columbia. ^[8]

In 2012, Soni was named to AdWeek's "Young Influentials", a list of 20 people under 40 "who are wicked smart and rebooting your world". ^[2] He was featured at a TEDx event held at Duke University in March 2012. ^{[5] [9]}

In May 2014, Soni transferred to India where he was in charge of launching the Huffington Post in the country. ^[10] He left the company before the launch to focus on writing a book. ^[11] Later, reports surfaced saying more than a book prompted his departure: internal complaints and a sexual harassment investigation of his management style were cited by current and former employees at the time. Arianna Huffington declined to comment on the matter. ^{[12] [13] [14]}

In 2014, Forbes named Soni one of the 30 people under 30 years of age in the media. ^[15] That same year the New York Observer listed him as the most "poachable" tech talent. ^[16] Previously, Soni was named one of Crain Communications' 40 Under Forty talents. ^[17]

In 2016, Soni worked with Eric Greitens on his successful campaign for governor in Missouri. ^[18]

Written works

Soni has co-authored several pieces with fellow Duke graduate Rob Goodman; their work has been featured in Politico, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, AdWeek, and The Atlantic, among others. ^{[1] [2] [7] [19] [20]} In 2012, Thomas Dunne Books a division of St. Martin's Press, published their first book, a biography of Cato the Younger, titled Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar. ^{[7] [21] [22]}

In 2017, Simon & Schuster published their biography of Claude Shannon, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age . ^[23] The book received positive reviews from the Wall Street Journal , Financial Times , Nature and others. ^{[24] [25] [26]} In an interview with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Soni explained that part of the reason he wrote A Mind at Play was that he was drawn to Shannon's personality and wanted to read a biography about him, but, "it turned out there wasn’t one." ^[27]

The British Society for the History of Mathematics awarded Soni and Goodman their 2017 Neumann Prize for A Mind at Play. ^[28]

In 2022, his second biography, The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, was published by Simon & Schuster. ^{[29] [30]}

Bibliography

• Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar. New York: Thomas Dunne Books. 2012. ISBN   978-0312681234.
• A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age . New York: Simon & Schuster. 2017. ISBN   978-1476766683.
• Jane's Carousel. New York: Phaidon Press. 2021. ISBN   978-1838661885.
• The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valle. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2022. ISBN   978-1501197260.

References