JOSH O’KANE has been a reporter with the Globe and Mail, Canada’s
largest national newspaper, since 2011. He won Germany’s Arthur F.
Burns Award for transatlantic political and cultural reporting in
2019, for his coverage of that country’s broad pushback against Big
Tech. O’Kane’s reporting has also won numerous Best in Canada
awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.
His first book, Nowhere with You, was a Canadian bestseller. He
lives in Toronto.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Finalist for the Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for
Political Writing
Finalist for the Ontario Speaker’s Book Award
Finalist for the SABEW Best in Business Book Award
Longlisted for the National Business Book Award
Nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award
A Hill Times Top 100 Best Book of 2022
“Sideways is a detailed, meticulously researched study of the
[Sidewalk Labs] affair and the future of cities.... The story of
how billionaires with big egos and big pet projects sometimes run
up against reality.... Reads a bit like a Greek tragedy, in case
anyone might be thinking of Icarus.” —The Globe and Mail
“In Sideways, Josh O’Kane presents the engaging, comprehensive tale
of Google’s collision with Waterfront Toronto, a
federal-provincial-municipal government development agency, as it
seeks to cash in on the love affair with Big Tech. Packed with
insightful interviews and tart observations of the zeitgeist,
O’Kane deftly combines analysis, telling anecdotes, and a helping
of wit to recount how the romance went sour. The result is a
definitive chronicle, leaving behind valuable lessons for Canadian
policymakers.” — 2023 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize Jury
“A thrill ride of a book, revealing what really happened when
Google tried to build a city and Silicon Valley’s magical thinking
fell to earth. O’Kane delivers the definitive chronicle of the
outsized personalities, combative politics, and corporate power
driving Google’s Toronto experiment, and the citizen pushback that
eventually sealed its doom. Sidewalk Labs may be nomore, but its
story has lasting lessons for our digital age.” —Margaret O’Mara,
author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
“In his crisply written and deeply researched book, Josh O’Kane
reveals precisely how Google, one of the most powerful companies of
all time, saw its techno-utopian vision for a city of the future
foiled by the people who would actually have to live there. A
crucial parable for any who finds themselves living more and more
in Big Tech’s backyard.” —Brian Merchant, author of The One
Device
“Big Tech is remaking our physical landscape in ways that we are
only beginning to reckon with. In Sideways, Josh O’Kane gives the
definitive account of the most ambitious remaking attempted yet:
the effort by one of the most powerful companies in the world to
build an entire urban neighborhood in its own image, in the fourth
largest city in North America. This is the engrossing saga of what
happens when our tech overlords let their overweening aspirations
get the better of them and finally meet their match.” —Alec
MacGillis, author of Fulfillment: America in the Shadow of
Amazon
“Sideways presents a captivating story that reads like a boardroom
TV drama. . . . The book details the pressing issues of the digital
age, and offers a fresh perspective on the messy complexity of
urban life. . . . [Sideways has] an uplifting air of
David-versus-Goliath storytelling mixed with an eye-opening window
into what a digital future might hold. . . . It is a story worth
reading.” —UrbanToronto
“The book is so fantastic and gives such a great insight into this
moment, this whole project, how it came to be, and how it
collapsed.” —Paris Marx, Tech Won’t Save Us podcast
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