Pulitzer Prize-nominated and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award recipient Ted Rall (To Afghanistan and Back; 2024: A Graphic Novel) has created a compact, sympathetic profile of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor and Central Intelligence Agency employee who leaked classified information about the agencies' post-9/11 domestic surveillance program to the world. Using simple and unobtrusive illustrations as a background to his narrative, Rall demonstrates how George Orwell's 1984 became fact rather than fiction and how one man's conscience and pursuit of justice pushed him into political exile.
Rall analyzes Snowden's youth in his attempt to understand what prompted Snowden down the path of whistleblowing. For all intents and purposes, he was living the good life--a conscientious and trustworthy Boy Scout who grew up in the D.C. suburbs and earned his GED at 16, a lucky millennial who turned his love of technology into a lucrative career as a systems administrator for the NSA and CIA, mining personal data from millions of Americans in search of terrorism threats. A State Department assignment to Switzerland exposed Snowden to leftist European political views, opening his eyes to abuses of power and propelling him to a course of action branded as treasonous.
Rall interviews boyhood acquaintances, teachers and government whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake, and draws together his own political views in developing his portrait of Snowden. Rall imparts a humanity to the man who government and media outlets portrayed as a traitor, and he leaves no doubt where his own loyalties lie, as he ties in Snowden's fate with Orwell's Winston Smith. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant