WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding Guardian Books, HK$240
Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website by Daniel Domscheit-Berg Jonathan Cape, HK$130
If the founder of WikiLeaks ever comes to a sticky end because the United States gets its hands on him (assuming it wants to, of course) we should not feel too sorry for Julian Assange, if only because such a fate is one that he seems to endorse for himself.
At least this much is implied in a 'callous' remark Assange allegedly made to journalists last year during several meetings held to discuss planning the world's greatest scoop.
The remark came up during talks on 'redactions' that should be made to the Afghan war logs, the pilfered US documents which Assange eventually agreed to make available to The Guardian, Le Monde, The New York Times and Der Spiegel.
Assange's comment is also one of the main selling points of Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, The Guardian's gripping account of its role in the WikiLeaks saga. The leak of the logs, dubbed the world's greatest scoop by some of the world's greatest news organisations, provided unprecedented detail about the war in Afghanistan. Later disclosures exposed cold-blooded murders in Iraq and held US diplomacy up to uncomfortable scrutiny - and the information was apparently obtained by Assange from the same source and broadcast on the internet.