May 23, 2011
Fowler, an award-winning Australian reporter, draws on interviews he conducted in 2010 with Julian Assange and his associates to offer an intriguing if slight biography of the controversial and charismatic editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Beginning with Assange's nomadic childhood (he and his mother, Christine, traveled Australia with her puppetry company), Fowler takes readers through Assange's equally unconventional years as a computer hacker. The early days of WikiLeaks to the Cablegate releases are recounted briskly, but Fowler can offer only a muddled explication of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Assange. For all the book's momentum and the author's ability to set a scene, Assange is so guarded and defensive that he doesn't emerge clearly. Fowler does the best he can given his limited access, but his characterizations of Assange ("complex and mercurial") aren't especially revelatory. The book is at its best and most useful as a primer of WikiLeaks (and leaking in general) and the effect it has had on media and government rather than on its "fearless" progenitor.