A review by larkspire
The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire by Wikileaks
4.0
Generally, this is an illuminating book on the US Government's place in international politics and its attempts to keep the US "exceptional", which happens to use the WikiLeaks cables as contextualising sources -- the introduction points out that academic journals, in particular, have ignored them. The quality of the different chapters varies widely (the first three and last two are the best), and there's plenty of overlap between them, but they're all worth at least glancing through, even if only for the interesting information provided in the author's sources (which fortunately are not limited to the leaked cables).
My only complaint, aside from the poorer chapters (I know first-year students who are better at padding than Naiman), is that on another level, this is obviously a PR exercise in part. The authors seem to have had to meet a quota of WikiLeaks mentions, even when it's beside the point (and the sources just happen to be cables made available there). A couple of chapters conclude by praising the website rather than making a final statement about the subject at hand; others, fortunately, are more reserved in their praise, and instead acknowledge that they could have made the same points (though in less depth) by referring solely to official, declassified sources and existing studies.
Most of the time, though, it's worth pushing past the sponsor shout-outs to get to the actual information.
My only complaint, aside from the poorer chapters (I know first-year students who are better at padding than Naiman), is that on another level, this is obviously a PR exercise in part. The authors seem to have had to meet a quota of WikiLeaks mentions, even when it's beside the point (and the sources just happen to be cables made available there). A couple of chapters conclude by praising the website rather than making a final statement about the subject at hand; others, fortunately, are more reserved in their praise, and instead acknowledge that they could have made the same points (though in less depth) by referring solely to official, declassified sources and existing studies.
Most of the time, though, it's worth pushing past the sponsor shout-outs to get to the actual information.