Description: "Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why ... have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against 'big government' led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement. But Mayer [argues] in this ... history [that] a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views also played a key role by bankrolling a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system"--Dust jacket flap of regular-print edition.
Review Quotes: ONE OF NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2016
A Washington Post Notable Book of 2016 "Mayer is. . . a writer whose reporting can leave a reader breathless. . . . I urge you to read Dark Money."--Bill Moyers "Jane Mayer's Dark Money is utterly brilliant and chilling -- no matter how much you think you already know. . . . Read it!"
--Naomi Klein, bestselling author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate "Jane Mayer's Dark Money. . . is absolutely necessary reading for anyone who wants to make sense of our politics. Lay aside the endless punditry about Donald's belligerence or Hillary's ambition; Mayer is telling the epic story of America in our time. It is a triumph of investigative reporting, perhaps not surprising for a journalist who has won most of the awards her profession has to offer.... She's a pro, and she's given the world a full accounting of what had been a shadowy and largely unseen force. . . . Remarkable."
--The New York Review of Books "The book is written in straightforward and largely unemotional prose, but it reads as if conceived in quiet anger. Mayer believes that the Koch brothers and a small number of allied plutocrats have essentially hijacked American democracy, using their money not just to compete with their political adversaries, but to drown them out. . . . Dark Money emerges as an impressively reported and well-documented work. . . . The importance of Dark Money [flows] from its scope and perspective. . . . It is not easy to uncover the inner workings of an essentially secretive political establishment. Mayer has come as close to doing it as anyone is likely to come anytime soon. . . . She makes a formidable argument."
--From the cover of the New York Times Book Review
"Revelatory. . .persuasive, timely and necessary. . . . Only the most thoroughly documented, compendious account could do justice to the Kochs' bizarre and Byzantine family history and the scale and scope of their influence."
--The New York Times