An ambitious overview that ultimately falls flat.
A wide-ranging look at politically motivated information leaks and the activists behind them.
In late 2010, Forbes technology reporter Greenberg sat down with the notorious Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. The resulting interview has been viewed nearly 1 million times on the Forbes website and served as a launching pad for Greenberg’s debut book. While the author scatters details of Assange and WikiLeaks throughout the book, Greenberg has larger aims: to catalogue “a revolutionary protest movement bent not on stealing information, but on building a tool that inexorably coaxes it out, a technology that slips inside of institutions and levels their defenses like a Trojan horse of cryptographic software and silicon.” With this in mind, the author examines the lives and work of numerous cryptographers, hackers and whistleblowers—some well-known (e.g., Daniel Ellsberg, who first leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971) and some considerably less so (Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Icelandic activist and member of parliament who is behind a push for greater freedom of information there). However, the book bounces between these often-unrelated biographies so frequently that readers get only a vague sense of each person’s character. A chapter on the hacker group Anonymous, for example, is based in large part on information from a defunct website and is especially hazy; readers will likely find better information in the recently published We Are Anonymous, by Parmy Olson, who, unlike Greenberg, actually interviewed Anonymous members. Overall, the book’s biggest flaw is that its scope is simply too wide. Greenberg valiantly attempts to cover the big picture of information leaks around the globe, but due to the overwhelming cast of characters—as well as some rather dull descriptions of how online cryptography works—the book never fully coalesces.
An ambitious overview that ultimately falls flat.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95320-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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