Kindle. Inevitable after watching Tina Satter's Reality (2023) which put the FBI's transcript of Ms Winner's arrest to movement. More true crime.
Ms Winner is famous for having been handed the longest sentence under the U.S. Espionage Act (which she has now served) despite the relative triviality of her crime, which was to leak an NSA document to The Intercept that illustrated some connections between Russia and Trump's campaign in 2016. The Intercept massively compounded her lack of opsec by more-or-less telling the FBI whodunit.
The first half of this book is interesting: she does a good job at describing her upbringing in south Texas and is especially strong on her complex and valuable relationship with her father. (The vibe is that her mother is relentlessly supportive and therefore the relationship is simpler but undervalued. Which is depressingly common.) She's obviously gifted with languages (I would've liked some more depth here). It is unfortunate that she did not learn more during her military training; perhaps they could've taught her more useful opsec/self-care at intelligence school. The latter half is mostly a gaol/prison log and things go (at repetitive length) about how you might expect. We don't find out what college classes she took in prison.
Ms Winner owns to having OCD, anger management issues, an eating disorder and so on that she manages with a disciplined and epic exercise regime and diet. (Some of that put me in mind of David Pocock.) She gets very frustrated when she can't control the things that help her manage her mental health, which is of course most of the time while she's incarcerated. Apparently it also helps if she can broadcast her achievements via Instagram, etc.
Beyond that there's not much to the story. She became a political football (of course) which means that most of the commentary about her is valueless. She makes it clear that she lacks judgement and often behaves impetuously. I wish she'd gotten better career advice and been more grounded in her longer term goals; she often seems to be insufficiently skeptical. I did not understand what she meant when she said she loves her country or why she converted to Judaism. The Rosenbergs got a mention. She gives a beautiful acknowledgement of Daniel Ellsberg's support (Secrets (2002)).
Nicolas Niarchos at the New York Times. Goodreads: so much vulnerability, so much trauma and pain, brave to put herself out there, raw and perhaps unlikeable. A recent (2025-09-11) interview on NPR.
