Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is, predictably, the central figure in his own memoir and is the only person whose motivations and intentions are explored to any serious degree. Snowden’s aim in the writing of this memoir seems to be to promote the idea that he should be pardoned for his crimes and, as such, this enterprise places restrictions on how much the reader truly learns about Snowden’s character.

The majority of the personal revelations made about Snowden’s life and history are used in the memoir to depict him as being an unusually patriotic individual, driven by the twin desires to gain knowledge and to serve the public, to the exclusion of all other motivations and interests. As a teenager he voluntarily decided to inform a nuclear research facility of a flaw in its website security and later, during his time at the CIA, took it...