Theo Baker is graduating from Stanford this spring with a book deal, a George Polk Award, and a front-row account of one of America's most romanticized institutions. His forthcoming book "How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University" was excerpted in The Atlantic, offering a granular portrait of what he calls "the Stanford inside Stanford."

Baker spent years talking with hundreds of students to document an invite-only world where venture capitalists wine and dine 18-year-olds, where "pre-idea funding" worth hundreds of thousands of dollars gets handed to students before they've had an original idea. Steve Blank, who teaches the school's legendary startup course, tells Baker that "Stanford is an incubator with dorms" — not meant as a compliment.

The pressure has been fully internalized. A decade ago, students felt Silicon Valley expectations pressing down from outside; now many arrive expecting to launch startups, raise money, and become rich as a matter of course. Baker also surfaces something Sam Altman articulates best: the VC dinner circuit has become an "anti-signal" to people who actually recognize talent. The performance of ambition and the thing itself are increasingly hard to tell apart.

The irony is sharp: this critically minded book about Stanford's relationship to power and money will likely be celebrated by the same class of people it critiques — and if it does well, used as further evidence that Stanford produces not just founders and fraudsters but important writers, too.