Harding, Luke

On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium?a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance. Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story?complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters. He shows how Litvinenko?s murder foreshadowed the killings of other Kremlin critics, from Washington, DC, to Moscow, and how these are tied to Russia?s current misadventures in Ukraine and Syria. In doing so, he becomes a target himself and unearths a chain of corruption and death leading straight to Vladimir Putin. From his investigations of the downing of flight MH17 to the Panama Papers, Harding sheds a terrifying light on Russia?s fracturing relationship with the West.

Edward Snowden is one of the most extraordinary whistleblowers in history. A precocious computer specialist who rapidly rose through the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community, Snowden was only twenty-nine years old when he exposed the National Security Agency's mass surveillance program of citizens, which collects and stores people?s phone calls, emails, and contacts. Forced to flee the country to escape federal prosecutors, he remains a controversial figure in exile, having been called, by turns, a traitor, a hero, a dissident, a patriot.

Looks at Edward Snowden who exposed the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government.