A lively, open-sourced account of the infamous 2014 Sony hack.
Heckenlively conducts an inquiry into the headline-grabbing cyberattack on Hollywood.
At the heart of this “fractured fairy tale of Hollywood, international affairs, and cyber-criminals” is the hack of Sony Pictures in 2014, in which a vast amount of confidential information about Sony employees and their families, as well as details about and footage from upcoming Sony movies, was scooped up by a hacking group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace” and partially released to the public. At the time, there was speculation that the hack had been sponsored by the North Korean government in retaliation for the 2014 movie The Interview, in which two American journalists are recruited by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong-un (Sony pulled the movie from mainstream distribution). Heckenlively asks, “Did Kim Jong-un decide that even a fictional account of his assassination by the CIA was a threat?” The author delves into everything that’s publicly known about the hack, sifting through a decade’s worth of interviews and news reports about the incident. He’s guided at many points by the experiences of two pseudonymous insiders, “Mr. Grey,” a former music industry professional, and “Eric,” a cyber-security expert. Eschewing the crackpot flavor of some of his earlier books (including one co-written with Alex Jones), Heckenlively here hews very closely to a purely factual reconstruction of events (allowing that the cyberhackers “may have been so good at concealing their true identities, that they may have genuinely deceived the North Korean dictator, the Hollywood executives, and our own intelligence agencies”), and even his occasional anti-establishment asides are thought-provoking, as when he wonders if the vilification of North Korea is a convenient political lie. Some of the details he reveals about Sony’s computer systems (there was no security; “Somebody could have literally walked into the computer room, plugged in a flash drive, and started downloading data”) are likewise fascinating.
A lively, open-sourced account of the infamous 2014 Sony hack.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781962984430
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Clear Lantern Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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