About this item
In China, university students use the Internet to save the life of an attempted murder victim. In Cuba, authorities unsuccessfully try to silence an online critic by sowing seeds of distrust in her marriage. And in Russia, a lone blogger rises to become one of the most prominent opposition figures since the fall of the Soviet Union. Authoritarian governments try to isolate individuals from one another, but in the age of social media freedom of speech is impossible to contain. Online, people discover that they are not alone. As one blogger put it, "Now I know who my comrades are."In her groundbreaking book, Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground, Emily Parker, formerly a State Department policy advisor, writer at The Wall Street Journal and editor at The New York Times, provides on-the-ground accounts of how the Internet is transforming lives in China, Cuba, and Russia.
About the Author
Emily Parker is the author of "Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground" which will be published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February, 2014. Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote that the book is "a rigorously researched and reported account that reads like a thriller. It's been a while since I have read a book that is so entertaining, not to mention so encouraging for the culture of liberty. " Vargas Llosa's full article about "Now I Know Who My Comrades Are" can be found here: Emily is currently digital diplomacy advisor and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, where she has been writing her book and working on a US-China innovation project. Previously, Emily was a member of Secretary Clinton's Policy Planning staff at the U.S. Department of State, where she covered Internet freedom, digital diplomacy and open government. Emily spent over five years working for The Wall Street Journal, first as a writer in Hong Kong and later as an editor in New York. From 2004 to 2005, she wrote a Wall Street Journal column called "Virtual Possibilities: China and the Internet. " She was also a staff op-ed editor for The New York Times. She has worked in China and Japan, and speaks Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish. She graduated with Honors from Brown University with a double major in International Relations and Comparative Literature (French and Spanish) . She has a Masters from Harvard in East Asian Studies.
