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.
