Wikileaks, By David Leigh and Luke Harding

The opening is classic journalism-as-book: "Glimpsed in the half-light of a London evening... she emerged cautiously." The "she" is Julian Assange in a wig. "At more than 6ft tall, he was never going to be a very convincing female."

The authors are journalists on The Guardian, which acted as a conduit for WikiLeaks. Packed with journalistic colour, their narrative reveals Assange as "charming" but "waspish".

Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the 250,000 diplomatic cables held by Wikileaks, has "a boyish smile and stood 5ft 2in tall". Despite this deluge of detail (including 18 pages on Assange's sexual activities in Stockholm), the revelations still seem less than earth-shaking.