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Everybody Knows: Corruption in America
America is corrupted, and everybody knows it. Vested interests have bent government powers to serve themselves, not the citizens, with dizzying results - egregious Supreme Court rulings, revolving doors and cozy deals between the state and the private sector, and forty years of financial meltdowns.
In this blistering book, Sarah Chayes shows that today's corruption - even the venality of the Trump administration - is part of global history, going back to the invention of money itself. We're not dealing with 'bad apples' lining individual pockets, but the widespread standard practice of sophisticated networks spanning political and national boundaries. But we can change this, individually, collectively and politically.
Searching and unflinching, Everybody Knows exposes a rigged system that strangles democracy, calling on readers everywhere to challenge it.
In this blistering book, Sarah Chayes shows that today's corruption - even the venality of the Trump administration - is part of global history, going back to the invention of money itself. We're not dealing with 'bad apples' lining individual pockets, but the widespread standard practice of sophisticated networks spanning political and national boundaries. But we can change this, individually, collectively and politically.
Searching and unflinching, Everybody Knows exposes a rigged system that strangles democracy, calling on readers everywhere to challenge it.
ebook
Published October 15, 2020
About the author
Sarah Chayes
10 books123 followersSarah Chayes is a former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former award-winning reporter for National Public Radio, she also served as special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
She graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover (1980) and Harvard University (1984) with a degree in History, magna cum laude. She was awarded the Radcliffe College History Prize. She then served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, returning to Harvard to earn a master's degree in History, specializing in the Medieval Islamic period. Besides English, she speaks Pashto, French, and Arabic.
From 1996 to 2002, she served as Paris reporter for National Public Radio, covering France, the European Union, North Africa, and the Balkans. She earned 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards (together with other members of the NPR team) for her reporting on the Kosovo War. After covering the fall of the Taliban and the early weeks of post-Taliban Afghanistan, in 2002 Chayes decided to leave reporting and stay behind to try to contribute to the rebuilding of the war-torn country.
Chayes lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan from 2002 to 2009. Having learned to speak Pashto, she helped rebuild homes and set up a dairy cooperative. In May 2005, she established the Arghand Cooperative, a venture that encourages local Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits, and herbs instead of opium poppies. The cooperative buys their almonds, pomegranate seeds, cumin and anise and artemisia and root dyes, extracts oils, essential oils, and tinctures from them, with which it produces soaps and other scented products for export. The cooperative is an associate member of the Natural Perfumers Guild.
Since leaving full-time radio reporting, she has been a frequent contributor to the print media, contributing to Foreign Policy Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, among other outlets. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace maintains an archive of her writings.
She graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover (1980) and Harvard University (1984) with a degree in History, magna cum laude. She was awarded the Radcliffe College History Prize. She then served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, returning to Harvard to earn a master's degree in History, specializing in the Medieval Islamic period. Besides English, she speaks Pashto, French, and Arabic.
From 1996 to 2002, she served as Paris reporter for National Public Radio, covering France, the European Union, North Africa, and the Balkans. She earned 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards (together with other members of the NPR team) for her reporting on the Kosovo War. After covering the fall of the Taliban and the early weeks of post-Taliban Afghanistan, in 2002 Chayes decided to leave reporting and stay behind to try to contribute to the rebuilding of the war-torn country.
Chayes lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan from 2002 to 2009. Having learned to speak Pashto, she helped rebuild homes and set up a dairy cooperative. In May 2005, she established the Arghand Cooperative, a venture that encourages local Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits, and herbs instead of opium poppies. The cooperative buys their almonds, pomegranate seeds, cumin and anise and artemisia and root dyes, extracts oils, essential oils, and tinctures from them, with which it produces soaps and other scented products for export. The cooperative is an associate member of the Natural Perfumers Guild.
Since leaving full-time radio reporting, she has been a frequent contributor to the print media, contributing to Foreign Policy Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, among other outlets. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace maintains an archive of her writings.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 27, 2022
The book explained how systematic corruption practiced in countries like Nigeria, Honduras, and Egypt is now evident in the US through the author's analytic framework.
This is the best book I have read so far on corruption in America and I enjoyed it. The best part of the book is the end where the author made a list of some intelligible solutions on how the pattern of these corrupt practices can be broken.
You should read this book if you wish to know how to identify and understand how corruption works not only in some third-world countries but how the systematic way it is being practiced in those countries has now become evident in the USA thanks to the framework the author of this book has been able to come up with.
This is the best book I have read so far on corruption in America and I enjoyed it. The best part of the book is the end where the author made a list of some intelligible solutions on how the pattern of these corrupt practices can be broken.
You should read this book if you wish to know how to identify and understand how corruption works not only in some third-world countries but how the systematic way it is being practiced in those countries has now become evident in the USA thanks to the framework the author of this book has been able to come up with.
Displaying 1 of 1 review