Gellman, who helped the Washington Post win two Pulitzer Prizes, clinched a third in 2014 (shared with the Guardian) for the Edward Snowden-inspired coverage of the U.S. National Security Agency. Gellman here uses his exchanges with Snowden as a springboard for further investigation into the surveillance state.

When Edward Snowden aimed to reveal the extent of U.S. government surveillance of its own citizens, he reached out to Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, filmmaker Laura Poitras, and Washington Post reporter Gellman. Thus, for the third time, Gellman helped the newspaper win a Pulitzer. Originally scheduled for July 2016.

A three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post-er, Gellman was among three journalists asked by Edward Snowden to help present his purloined National Security Agency documents to the world. That's his springboard for this in-depth study of the modern surveillance state.

In this latest work, Gellman, a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist and author of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, describes his experience being among the first to report Edward Snowden's 2013 massive leak of National Security Agency (NSA) programs and methods; he now provides a thorough overview of the circumstances and consequences of that event. One doesn't have to necessarily agree with Gellman's premise that Snowden's exposure "did more good than harm" in order to find this account of the ensuing legal and ethical questions surrounding NSA's counterintelligence efforts to be an engaging one. Based on several firsthand conversations with Snowden, this book also sheds insight into the history of surveillance and the NSA itself, with interviews from former NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, along with others who either agreed or disagreed with Snowden's decision. Occasional NSA vocabulary throughout doesn't detract from the narrative. VERDICT Gellman effectively details the scope and ambition of the NSA, and has written a well-documented account on the far-reaching impact of U.S. domestic surveillance and the resulting intrusions of privacy; highly recommended both for general readers and those with an interest in national security.—Zachary Irwin, formerly with Penn State Behrend

Pulitzer Prize winner Gellman (Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency) delivers an eloquent behind-the-scenes account of his reporting on NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leak of top-secret U.S. intelligence documents in 2013. Introduced to Snowden (at that point known only by the code name Verax) by documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, Gellman first had to convince Snowden of the value of working with a "card-carrying member of the mainstream media," then keep a massive cache of classified documents from falling into the hands of foreign intelligence agents while publishing excerpts and analysis in the Washington Post. By revealing that the NSA was engaged in "mass domestic surveillance," Snowden did "substantially more good than harm," Gellman writes, though he gives space in the book to dissenting opinions from an array of national security officials. Gellman also describes some of his personal cybersecurity measures, hints at the secrets he withheld from publication, explores the ramifications of Snowden's leaks in the Trump era, and settles scores with Glenn Greenwald, who broke the first story on the matter. Enriching the high-level technical and legal analysis with a sharp sense of humor, Gellman presents an exhaustive study of intelligence gathering in the digital age. Even readers who have followed the Snowden story closely will learn something new. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency(May).