WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

by David Leigh, Luke Harding, Charles Arthur, Ed Pilkington, Robert Booth Narrated by Paul Michael Garcia

Overview

A team of journalists with unparalleled inside access provides the first full, in-depth account of WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the ethical, legal, and political controversies it has both uncovered and provoked.

The extraordinary twists and turns of WikiLeaks have been closely followed by the Guardian newspaper ever since the website launched in 2006, and Guardian journalists have had unprecedented access to all the major players, from angry and embarrassed politicians and diplomats to the extraordinary figure of Julian Assange himself. At different times Assange hid at David Leigh's homes. Here they reveal the many strands-legal, ethical, security related-of a story that continues to dominate world headlines. They look at the Internet culture and technology that made the mining of secret information possible and at the fanatical hackers who set up WikiLeaks. They explore the secret goings-on that WikiLeaks has uncovered, from the revelation of extrajudicial killings in Kenya in 2008 to the avalanche of US diplomatic cables in 2010. They study the implications of the latest revelations and reveal the strange and contradictory nature of Assange himself: a man praised by Amnesty International in 2009 but also, barely a year later, accused by Swedish police of sex crimes.

The WikiLeaks story has received worldwide attention and reaction. WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy presents the whole history of the organization and the ethical debate that surrounded the use of its material, plus the inside story of the personalities that created then threatened to destroy the website that has changed our view of secrecy forever.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Mediaite, February 5, 2011
“While [The Guardian’s] rendition of experience does not fail to leave out the requisite depiction of Assange as overbearing and paranoid, the overall tone of the story, rather than vengeful, is surprisingly self-effacing.”

TechCrunch, February 12, 2011
“You can imagine, then, how delighted I was to receive a copy of the Guardian’s new crash-published Wikileaks book and discover that it was all the things I wanted from the Times’ book. And more… Indeed, while ‘Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War On Secrecy’ is many things – a thriller, a story of international diplomacy, a tale of greed and ambition and double-crosses; a comedy, a tragedy – above all it’s a manifesto for the future of professional journalism…If Wikileaks is this generation’s Watergate, then ‘Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy’ might well prove to be its All The President’s Men; educating a whole new generation of would-be reporters on the power and importance of the professional press.”
 
MacLean’s, March 1, 2011
“Leigh’s portrait of the WikiLeaks founder is at once affectionate and damning—a dry-eyed examination of the way celebrity can pervert a burgeoning ego.

AUGUST 2011 - AudioFile

We truly are in the Information Age—but what information should be released to the public, and how? This book tries to formulate answers to those questions by looking at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his life, including his early penchant for computers and the rape charges against him. Paul Michael Garcia’s narration is functional, and his diction is clear. But his delivery has a robotic quality, as if he were reading a script. The last few hours of the book, on the politics of information, tend to be dense. What truly engages is the authors’ inside look at how WikiLeaks was able to disseminate masses of classified information, both through technical means and through the cooperative effort of the mainstream media. M.B. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169862218
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	03/01/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

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