Allen & Unwin The Snowden Files book Politics English Paperback 384 pages

Investigative journalism at its best, telling the full story of the biggest leak in history and the forces that tried to stop them.

Edward Snowden, a young computer genius working for America's National Security Agency, blew the whistle on the way this frighteningly powerful organisation uses new technology to spy on the entire planet. The consequences have shaken the leaders of nations worldwide. This is the inside story of Snowden's deeds and the journalists who faced down pressure from the US and UK governments to break a remarkable scoop. From the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Hawaii, carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of secret-spilling in Hong Kong and his battle for asylum, Snowden's story reads like a globe-trotting thriller.

Luke Harding is a journalist, writer and award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief; the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war. He is the author of The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitkin, nominated for the Orwell Prize, Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, both written with David Leigh, and Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia. Luke Harding lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and their two children.