The book goes a long way toward explaining why Seattle was so unprepared for what happened. (To be fair, no city could have properly prepared for an invasion on this scale—some 50,000 demonstrators.)Â
The most interesting material is not about how these three women teamed up and caught the person tormenting them, but how—and for how long—they enthusiastically submitted to their digitally-delivered torture.
This book goes far beyond discussions of political policies and rights. There is poetry, haiku, fiction, and nonfiction reminiscences by the imprisoned that highlight the shock and dislocation experienced by people in human, often oddly mundane, terms.
The result of her efforts is a great gift to historians. It is by turns inspiring, instructive, revealing, astonishing, shocking, and—when considered in contrast with present-day politics—almost unbearably depressing.
Transcendence, he wants us to know, is indispensable to survival, and—as Rushdie illustrates in the transcendent telling of this horrible story—attainable. But it also is hard to sustain.