Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State (Unabridged)
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4.2 • 14 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” – The New York Times
A wild, humane, and hilarious meditation on post-privacy America—from the acclaimed author of Thrown
Who are you? You are data about data. You are a map of connections—a culmination of everything you have ever posted, searched, emailed, liked, and followed. In this groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction, Kerry Howley investigates the curious implications of living in the age of the indelible. Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs tells the true story of intelligence specialist Reality Winner, a lone young woman who stuffs a state secret under her skirt and trusts the wrong people to help. After printing five pages of dangerous information she was never supposed to see, Winner finds herself at the mercy of forces more invasive than she could have possibly imagined.
Following Winner’s unlikely journey from rural Texas to a federal courtroom, Howley maps a hidden world, drawing in John Walker Lindh, Lady Gaga, Edward Snowden, a rescue dog named Outlaw Babyface Nelson, and a mother who will do whatever it takes to get her daughter out of jail. Howley’s subjects face a challenge new to history: they are imprisoned by their past selves, trapped for as long as the Internet endures. A soap opera set in the deep state, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs is a free fall into a world where everything is recorded and nothing is sacred, from a singular writer unafraid to ask essential questions about the strangeness of modern life.
Customer Reviews
21st Century GonZo
Great audiobook here.
Concisely laid out, Kerry Howleys narrative carefully lays out the moral consequences of todays newer digital surveillance age and our social responsibilities with it. Wonderful prose weaving several case studies in point nicely that left me pondering long after my first listen, Reality’s story in particular highlights in particular our reckoning as a free democracy that just so happens to also have Supermad super spy capabilities and the slippery slope of its abuses and vulnerabilities. Listen here not to the political scarecrow ‘deep state’ but an honest and fair discussion about the real one, the one that not only shamelessly invades our privacy but quite often also keeps us safe as well but what’s the trade off? The ironies and the contradictions they juxtapose off of are all presented here. 21st century Gonzo. I highly recommend it.