dward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.
In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.
Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online—a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

1984年，野火集專欄在中國時報人間副刊刊出，作者龍應台當年只是個投書的女子，文章刊出後，回應不斷，在那個沒有網路沒有電郵、電視只有三台、電台只有公營、報禁未開的戒嚴年代，「野火」的影響力靠口傳、靠影印、靠大字報，也正因此，1985年「野火」成書上市，短短二十一天再版二十四次，四個月後馬上要破十萬本的大關，讓「野火」成了一個時代的共同記憶。 那正是熱切希望突破現狀、衝撞權威的八０年代。奮不顧身、理想閃爍著光采的野火時代，二十年後看來，那也是充滿了台灣命運的種種契機的時代。
一篇〈中國人，你為什麼不生氣〉的個人投書會演變成一股燎原野火，一個學英美文學批評的女子，成了推動社會說真話的能量來源！「野火」之後不久，台灣經歷了開放黨禁報禁、解嚴、政治強人過世、民意代表全面改選、總統直選；台灣宛然脫胎換骨的青春期男女，經歷著關鍵的二十年。《野火集》二十周年紀念版便是台灣社會不分藍綠充滿熱情的青春的記憶，這場「時代的刻痕」，有著更多豐富的故事，每一篇《野火集》的文字背後，有著說不完風聲鶴唳的時代痕跡，本書整理出龍應台當年精采文章及其幕後種種，並增加了海內外最具代表性的二十位華人(柏楊、余秋雨等)為他們所共同見證的台灣青春時期留下文字，共同推薦。