This book was challenging and dense but without exaggeration, it changed the way I think about the world around me. Like Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, but with a much more ambitious scope. 

The authors are both scholars – each chapter methodically and clearly examines a specific organization or group of people at a key point in history, to do two things: (1) show how wealthy businessmen and their trade associations used money to influence political and public discourse in favour of their interests, and (2) how the actual sources, data and arguments are manipulated, misinterpreted or flat out invented to suit these goals. 

It goes as deep as GE and Reagan, Milton Friedman and Hayek, Ayn Rand and Little House on the Prairie. The authors show how a willful misreading of The Wealth of Nations set the agenda for the deregulation craze and lack of antitrust action starting in the 70s. How big business co-opted religion in the mid-20th century to support its pro-inequality stance. How presidents from across the political spectrum were either convinced or duped into supporting laws that directly benefit corporations at the expense of the citizens. 

It is convincing, effective and entirely upsetting. 

I’m Canadian, so I often think about how connected culturally and economically we are to the US today. This book helps illustrate how different the two countries were throughout the 20th century (including the surprising use of Ontario Hydro as an example of how a public utility can outperform a private one), and I’d say we’re better for it.