README.txt: A Memoir

by Chelsea Manning Narrated by Chelsea Manning

Overview

"Manning reads her book in a sharp voice that is clearly accustomed to marshaling information..."- Washington Post

"[Manning's] text and performance create a blistering autobiography that is both observant and instructive."- AudioFile

"In both content and narration, Manning displays a keen ability to imbue this detailed account of her life and activism with both sarcasm and sincerity." - Library Journal

"In this revealing memoir, Manning details her experience in military intelligence and her ultimate decision to share classified information with WikiLeaks in this revealing memoir. Listeners will appreciate Manning's voice as she explores her reasoning for her decisions and accepts her fate with dignity."- Booklist

This program is read by the author.

An intimate, revealing memoir from one of the most important activists of our time.

While working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq for the United States Army in 2010, Chelsea Manning disclosed more than seven hundred thousand classified military and diplomatic records that she had smuggled out of the country on the memory card of her digital camera. In 2011 she was charged with twenty-two counts related to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military records, and in 2013 she was sentenced to thirty-five years in military prison.

The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition, seeking hormones through the federal court system. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison.

In README.txt, Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional transparency and government accountability took place alongside a fight to defend her rights as a trans woman. Manning details the challenges of her childhood and adolescence as a naive, computer-savvy kid, what drew her to the military, and the fierce pride she has about the work she does. This powerful, observant memoir will stand as one of the definitive testaments of our digital, information-driven age.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Chelsea Manning narrates her own memoir, which chronicles her ambition to make the government and military transparent and beholden to the citizenry they serve. Manning leaked to the public thousands of documents and videos she collected as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq. Her 35-year sentence to a federal penitentiary was commuted in 2017 after 7 years. Hearing her life story in her own words and voice layers in a compelling sense of intimacy and urgency. In a meticulous account, Manning not only confronts her drive for transparency but also examines her life of gender dysphoria before her gender-affirmation surgery. Manning maintains a flat affect when describing the abuse she’s endured. Her text and performance create a blistering autobiography that is both observant and instructive. J.M.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Library Journal

05/01/2022

After recounting a difficult childhood and her pride in joining the military, Manning chronicles her 2010 decision to leak 720,000 classified military documents while working in U.S. Army intelligence and declaration of her gender identity as a woman after being convicted of the unlawful possession and distribution of these materials. Originally scheduled for July 2020; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Chelsea Manning narrates her own memoir, which chronicles her ambition to make the government and military transparent and beholden to the citizenry they serve. Manning leaked to the public thousands of documents and videos she collected as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq. Her 35-year sentence to a federal penitentiary was commuted in 2017 after 7 years. Hearing her life story in her own words and voice layers in a compelling sense of intimacy and urgency. In a meticulous account, Manning not only confronts her drive for transparency but also examines her life of gender dysphoria before her gender-affirmation surgery. Manning maintains a flat affect when describing the abuse she’s endured. Her text and performance create a blistering autobiography that is both observant and instructive. J.M.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2022-10-16
The trans Army analyst who served seven years in prison for disclosing documents tells her story.

"It is not possible to work in intelligence and not imagine disclosing the many secrets you bear,” writes Manning, who documents the pressures she was under during her service in Iraq, leading her to load thousands of documents and videos onto a hard drive and share them with WikiLeaks in 2010. Her disillusionment with the U.S. operation in Iraq was earned the hard way, by witnessing firsthand mistakes with bloody results, institutionalized xenophobia, and other infamously oxymoronic qualities of "military intelligence." Manning doesn't make that joke, or any other one, in this memoir. As the title suggests, she writes like a computer programmer, albeit a very smart and literate one, who read more than 1,000 books during her imprisonment. Manning's story as it has unfolded over the past decade has been difficult to parse, but what becomes clear is that she is not a political partisan: The principle she holds most dear is transparency. Whether she is describing her unhappy childhood in central Oklahoma or her time locked in a cage in Kuwait, her story is rich in detail but somewhat flat in affect. She grew up with gender dysphoria from an early age. As soon as the internet was invented, she became a troll and a hacker ("My chan buddies and I were baby edgelords"), and it was these computer skills that "got me noticed—in both good and bad ways" in the Army. Once she realized that her apparent gender was inconsistent with her true self, transparency required she claim her identity as a woman. Doing so from military prison put her at odds with the institution in a whole new way, which she faced with grim determination. A prefatory note clarifies that this manuscript passed through the Department of Defense approval process, with only a few paragraphs redacted.

Manning demonstrates her integrity in this meticulous account of a person constitutionally opposed to secrets and lies.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176125849
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	10/18/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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