No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald isn’t exactly a hyped book. But when I spotted it going for free at my old work, I couldn’t resist it. It’s all about Edward Snowden’s NSA leak which is something I’ve wanted to learn more about.
This was incredibly interesting. Greenwald is actually the journalist whom Snowden worked with to release the data, meaning that we get a full rundown of the events. We learn who Greenwald was prior to all this (and a little bit about Snowden too), and how Snowden got in contact with him in the first place. We learn about how Greenwald’s husband was impacted, as well as Greenwald himself. And all of this is on top of what we learn about the leaks themselves.
Greenwald isn’t great at tech, he makes that clear through a few anecdotes of Snowden struggling to get him to use encrypted methods of communication. However, this means that we get some pretty basic and easy to understand explanations of the information that he’s included in this book.
One thing I will never get over is the ridiculous PowerPoint presentations that had been used by the NSA. Now PowerPoint is a great tool, but why was a government organisation using the old rainbow WordArt effect? 😂
I did try and run this through CAWPILE, but in 2021 there wasn’t a non-fiction rating available so I was basically just trying to make it equal my actual rating! So. I gave this book a solid 4 star rating.
If you’re at all interested in this topic, I think this is a really great book to fill up and I’m glad I’ve got this on my non-fiction shelves!
Abi of Pellinor 