Michael Evans
File Bodies
The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster
By Edward Lucas
Kindle Single 76pp £0.99
The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man
By Luke Harding
Guardian Books/Faber & Faber 346pp £12.99
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State
By Glenn Greenwald
Hamish Hamilton 259pp £20
The phenomenon that is Edward Snowden seems to attract just two schools of thought: either he is a traitor to his country and to his employers or he is a whistleblower worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. His deeds have caused outrage and praise alike. Those who believe he has done today’s world a service by exposing America’s global snooping on private communications seem rarely to pause to consider what damage he may have done, while those who criticise his perceived betrayal want nothing less than a public hanging and don’t want to contemplate the Big Brother surveillance system that he uncovered as a privileged member of America’s huge intelligence community.
Three books about the former US National Security Agency contractor follow this polarised position-taking – two in favour of Snowden, one seriously against. Edward Lucas’s apoplectic vignette, The Snowden Operation, not only denounces Snowden as an unprincipled traitor guilty of stealing the largest consignment of American secrets in the country’s
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm