The Man Who Hacked the World was a good read by Alex Cody Foster. John McAfee parted ways with the McAfee Antivirus software company in 1994.He embarked on business, political, and criminal enterprises. He invested in cybersecurity and cryptocurrency, was accused of murdering his neighbor in Belize, and also had two unsuccessful bids for President of the United States.Alex Cody Foster was hired as McAfee’s ghostwriter. He traveled with McAfee across America and Europe for six months. This led to occasionally evading killers and kidnappers. He tells the tale of how they met as well as the adventures they went on. I enjoyed reading this book and can’t wait to read more by the author.

Insane. Ridiculous. Not as advertised.

This book tells the over-the-top story of Alex Cody Foster's entire life, and only gets to his work with John McAfee in like the last third of the book. Until then, we're treated to barely believable tales of his chosen homelessness, descent into mental illness, constant run-ins with the most bizarre people on Earth, horrible family, etc. etc. etc. The John McAfee section itself was out there and crazy too, but at least it was about what the title of the book said it would be about.

Foster was trying a bit too hard here to sound... "like a writer," I guess? I don't know how much of this book to believe, but either way, I don't really care.

I love a good tech fraud story so I had high hopes for this book. The marketing seems to imply it will be primarily about John McAfee and how the author unraveled his story. I was expecting a Bad Blood read alike. Instead? The first half of this book is an unnecessary memoir. I think it’s meant to show the reader that the author has a troubled part as well, therefore he can relate to McAfee but I honestly could not convince myself to care enough.

I thought I was reading a book about John McAfee.... but I got a whole lot more than I bargained for. This book takes you places you probably never thought you'd go and makes you think about things you probably wouldn't have otherwise. I listened to the audiobook and was fascinated from beginning to end. I highly recommend!!

This memoir sucks you in from the very beginning! The bridge and cemetery scenes were movie theater worthy. The narrator was so talented. I saw and heard him as both the author and narrator! That was weird for me. I don't think I can bring myself to look at the Netflix show. This reality was too intense for me. It very well done and an excellent audiobook experience.
#TheManWhoHackedtheWorld #NetGalley #Biographies #Memoirs #DreamscapeMedia

I went into this book completely blind and I am so glad I did. I thought it was a book on how he developed McAfee virus software (😂) and boy was I greatly mistaken. I don’t want to say too much about this book, because I feel like it’s a book you need to experience without any prejudice or prejudgments. But what I will say, this is a revieting book about not only John McAfee, but also Alex Cody Foster. Seeing how McAfee and Foster intersect and intertwine. Listening to this book, rather than reading a physical copy, is the way to go. The narrator was the perfect person for this book and brought a layer of intensity that reading alone cannot capture. When you read this, make sure you listen to it. You will not be disappointed.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the ALC

John McAfee,

successful businessman

presidential candidate

computer hacker

liar

murderer

secret holder

dead man.

I’m not sure I’ve heard of a crazier life than that of John McAfee. From the young age of 15 he was a killer. Of his own dad, nonetheless. His dad, father, the man who created him, and the same man who drunkenly beat him night after night.

One night, John got tired of his dad’s abuse towards him and his mother, and decided to end his father’s life with the pull of a trigger. From that moment on, John knew what hatred, death, pain, betrayal, and heartache felt like.

This book starts with the story of the author, Alex Cody Foster and his meandering journey through life on his path towards closure from the past and a hope of freedom for the future.

A freedom from himself and his past, a past that echo’d that of John McAfee.

Foster was raised by his mother and father, though he was barely raised at all. His mother was seemingly bipolar, though undiagnosed and unrecognized by her. His father was an alcoholic and an abuser, much like John’s.

This memoir takes us on an exploration of the mind and soul, of love and fear, of the human condition. Foster and McAfee were raised in somewhat similar situations, but as the book goes on we learn about the fundamental core of foundational layers of belief that separate them .

This book leads us to an examination within ourselves, wondering what differentiates John, who killed his father to save himself and his mother, from Alex, who threatened to kill his dad but never did.

Is the thought of murder as evil as the murder itself? Was John courageous for standing up to his father therefore ending the cruelty, and Alex wrong for not and letting it go on for longer?

What is right and what is wrong in the first place?

John, a computer programmer saw life as purely rational. He said though he loved his wife dearly, he would never die for her nor anyone else. He said one would be stupid for dying for another, because in the end we are all, every single one of us, inherently selfish beings.

He saw how parents could kill their children if it meant they could survive. He saw cruelty in the world, and seemed to shut off his emotions in order to live with it. He lived on a roller-coaster of loss, loneliness and fear, claiming that it’s simply how the world works and always will.

Alex, a lost soul found by the love of stories, writing, and companionship, on the other hand says he would die for a loved one.

He tells a story in the book of how he once held his arm against a boiling pot to see if love or pain was greater within him. As his skin reddened and blistered by the heat of the pot, in minutes it became numb and his arm, and pain, could barely be felt. It was the feeling of love for his girlfriend that kept him going up to that point, and from then on, Alex knew that love was the most powerful emotion of all.

It was love that would reconcile the past and love that is the only hope for the future.

The Man Who Hacked The World begins with a memoir of the author’s life, telling us the ever engaging and unexpected story of what lead him to become the (hired…then later fired…) ghostwriter for John McAfee.

Alex Foster felt misunderstood for as long as he could remember. When he tried to help, others would recoil. When he tried to show kindness, others would show malice. He was surrounded by the culture of transactions instead of his operating system of acceptance and love.

This confused him, so he set out on a journey across America from his home state of Maine to the symbol of freedom, California; barely any money in his pockets, hitchhiking along the way.

In California, he saw the great contrast between the have’s and the have nots. The millionaire subdivisions and the tent camps surrounding them. He wanted to bridge the divide, and began filming a documentary featuring the homeless to show how, in the end, we’re not that different after all.

Alex, inspired by the story of the power of love by one of the homeless men he interviewed, began spreading love within the homeless community. He bought Honey Buns and gave them out for free. He gave money to the homeless, all the while being homeless himself.

It was an incident while trying to sleep on the beach that drove Alex ‘crazy’.

Alone on the beach, a professionally dressed man walked up to Alex, drawing a knife and demanding him to remove his pants. Alex barely got away, stabbing the man and leaving him for dead in the process.

When Alex came back to the beach a few hours later to bring closure to this horrific event while being protected by the light of the day, he saw something that stayed in his thoughts for years. The man was gone, leaving sand the color of blood in his place.

Was Alex bad for trying to kill this man in the first place, or was he even worse for not finishing the job and therefore allowing what almost happened to him to surely happen to others in the future?

This was his tipping point. He had seen evil and experienced forms of cruelty, but never before had he been so close to death himself and so close to killing another.

He had a nervous break.

He felt lost.

Alone.

Surrounded by evil, with no place to call home and no rock to hold onto for support.

Though this book is titled ‘The Man Who Hacked The World’, it’s a memoir about Alex as much as it is about John, tactfully weaving a story between the loose ends, high peaks, and dark pits of one searching soul and another.

Much like John throughout his life, Alex started his life as a young adult on the move. On the run, not quite knowing if it were motivated by moving toward something better, or away from something worse.

Alex never felt at home, though he had a house and a family. Alex never felt understood, though he thought his intentions were pure.

It was these underlying feelings that drew him to John McAfee. The same McAfee seemingly so alone and misunderstood by others. Always on the run and never in one place for long. McAfee, the man constantly betrayed by those closest to him, but why?

It wasn’t until Alex Cody Foster became the unsuspecting ghost writer for John that he grew to learn how similar the two really were. Fortunately and more importantly, after 6 months of working for John, Alex was also able to discern where their similarities ended and stark differences began.

Mcafee saw life as a game of winners and losers. Of 1’s and 0’s, reality and fiction, give and take. John saw the world as selfish and ruthless, because that’s what surrounded him. Yet his ego told him that he had life figured out. He was rich, smart, and seemingly successful based on his long list of worldly accomplishments.

He said he lived in peace, yet a piece in him was missing. The puzzle piece of selfless love, which marks the red X on the jigsaw of life.

He was afraid to love, because his whole life all he knew was selfishness, betrayal and loss.

Finishing this book, we discern that it’s the selfishness, betrayal, and loss within himself that keep him from the oneness, truth, and beauty of love for himself and others.

Foster, on the other hand, learned to see life as a journey from the individual one back to the oneness of the whole. Though his mother tried to kill him and he was abused by his dad as a child, he always had something inside telling him there was hope for better.

Trying to find this ‘better’ within John McAfee, he spent the craziest 6 months of his life living along side one of the most wanted and infamous men in the world. He thought he could understand himself better through understanding the enigma of John McAfee.

He wanted to find truth through the lies and healing through the pain that was John McAfee’s life. He thought that through the confusion surrounding John, he could find clarity within himself.

I’m not sure if Alex found what he was looking for in the depths of John’s past, just as the moral of one story can’t be found in the pages of another. Sure, Alex’s story rhymed with John’s, but being written by a different author with the pen bent towards love rather than fear and hate, it did not repeat.

This book is the story of a boy’s search for meaning, acceptance, and love while surrounded by the nihilism, death, and destruction that borders so much of life. He tried to find a path and direction from others, thinking there he could find the missing piece to his unboxed puzzle.

When Alex finally started putting thoughts into words and words into ink did he begin to find himself. The freedom to express, create, and escape opened up a whole new world to him as a boy reading books in the library during lunch break. Through writing did he begin to exercise the innate freedom within. The freedom to create your own stories, characters, good guys and bad. The freedom to find reprieve from the never-ending hamster wheel of life, realizing the necessity of death, because without it, there would be no sacredness to life.

This book, The Man Who Hacked The World is as much a page-turner as it is a reflective mirror into our own journey towards personal freedom. McAfee found his illusion of freedom through lying, cheating, killing, and hiding. Foster finds his through much simpler and wholesome means: creativity and compassion.

Yes, this book contains some absolutely mind-blowing stories of the escapades of the man that was John McAfee. From the story told by John about the backdoor he included in McAfee Antivirus, allowing him to spy on the data of everyone who used it…to the ones that divulged some of the secrets that were found from the data within, this book opened my eyes to what really goes on behind locked doors of the powerful, selfish, and rich. I can’t help myself but to tell the barely believable stories divulged within to any ear within hearing distance, knowing that the story within the story is sure to captivate a curious mind.

But it wasn’t the crazy stories of John McAfee that I’m still thinking of a few days after finishing this book. What stayed with me is how people can disassociate from the world of love and emotion, claiming it’s the world of reality and truth and individuality that are the only things there for you in the end.

If you learn to disassociate from the self, John described, there is no self to hurt. What he didn’t seem to understand, something the author Alex learned as a kid, is that love, if allowed, is far more powerful than pain.

Not marketed well. The first third or more of the book is about the author, his autobiography. He gets away with it because he's a great writer, and he justifies why in the foreword, but a little annoying.

I just recently watched a documentary about John McAfee and found it so interesting. This book filled in some of the questions I had and thought the research and reporting was fantastic. Kudos to the author.