Two weeks ago, I reviewed the New York Times’ book: ‘Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy‘. It’s a remarkable work of journalism, combining the paper’s collected reporting on Wikileaks, with editor Bill Keller’s personal account of working with Assange.
For my money, Keller’s account was the stand-out highlight of the book – a behind the scenes journalism thriller, punctuated by highlights from the leaked documents themselves.
In fact, as I read through the bulk of the book, I found myself wishing that Keller’s style had continued throughout. Even in edited, compiled form, the revalations from “Cablegate” and the Iraq war logs are a lot to digest and it would have been wonderful to have Keller as narrator to walk the reader through them all. That didn’t affect my review, though. I knew I was asking too much to expect the Times publish that kind of comprehensive narrative so quickly.
You can imagine, then, how delighted I was to receive a copy of the Guardian’s new crash-published Wikileaks book and realise that it was all the things I wanted from the Times’ book. And more.