When Yahoo hired star Google executive Marissa Mayer to be its CEO in 2012 employees rejoiced. They put posters on the walls throughout Yahoo’s California’s headquarters. On them, there was Mayer’s face and one word: HOPE. But just more than a year later–on November 4, 2013–Mayer sat in front those same employees in a huge cafeteria on Yahoo’s campus and took the beating of her life. Her hair wet, and her tone defensive, Mayer read and answered a series of employee-posed questions challenging the basic elements of her plan. There was anger in the room – and behind it, a question: Was Mayer actually going to be able to do this thing? Nicholas Carlson’s fast-paced narrative is the inside story of how Yahoo got into such awful shape in the first place, Mayer’s controversial rise at Google, and her desperate fight to save an Internet icon.

Nicholas Carlson is Business Insider’s chief correspondent. His investigative reporting re-wrote the histories of Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon. His coverage of Yahoo won Digiday’s award for “Best Editorial Achievement” of the year. Carlson is a frequent guest on CNBC and contributes to the Bloomberg biography series, Game Changers.