Author:Kurt Andersen
How an elite cabal rewrote the American dream for their gain – and left the rest of world behind.
Evil Geniuses is the secret history of how, over the last half century, from even before Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump, America has sharply swerved away from its dream of progress for the many to a system of unfettered profit and self-interest for the few.
As the social liberation of the 1960s finally ended in the chaos of Vietnam and Watergate, a cabal of rich industrialists, business chiefs, wide-eyed libertarians and right-wing economic radicals were waiting, determined to claw back everything they saw as rightfully theirs.
Largely out of sight, they rapidly built and funded a new empire of think tanks and academic institutions and professional organisations, lobbying and political groups, using them to transform politics, media, finance, the legal system and US laws to reinvent and control the political economy. A throwback to the robber barons of a century earlier, they sold the remade system to the people as a nostalgic return to traditional American values. Within a decade, America’s flourishing forward-thinking vision was incarcerated by the unchecked financial accumulation and political power of the super-rich.
Now, the moneymen are running the show.
In this hugely entertaining and deeply researched cultural and economic exposé, New York Times bestselling author Kurt Andersen maps the rich history of intricate networks, unlikely connections and dark truths which are controlling a nation, revealing how on earth America got to where it is now – and what it might do to win its progressive future back.
Essential, absorbing, infuriating, full-of-facts-you-didn't-know, saxophonely written. This is one of those situations where the book is better than the review, so you should read it... a radicalized moderate's moderate case for radical change.
—— Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book ReviewNostalgia is the antithesis of history. Anderson brilliantly exposes how nostalgia — the strategic oversimplification of our past — has erased complexity and friction from our country’s narrative to serve a single goal: to preserve the status quo for the benefit of those in power. As such, Evil Geniuses documents how history and nostalgia are engaged in a hand to hand combat that may determine our future.
—— Ken Burns, director of The Civil War and The Roosevelts: An Intimate HistoryEvil Geniuses is Kurt Andersen at his riveting best - a genuinely original exploration of the forces that have shaped today's economy and society, and what can be done to repair the damage. A route map out of the strange season of pandemic.
—— Matthew D'Ancona, editor and partner of Tortoise Media and author of Post-TruthElegantly written, full of insight, and ultimately optimistic, Evil Geniuses challenges America to do better, to be better. A wry look at what went wrong and sober thinking about what needs to happen now. If you want to know why America is where it is and how it can change, this is your book.
—— Justin Webb, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today ProgrammeThis is the one book everyone must read. . . With lucid writing and head-snapping insights, Kurt Andersen explores how the right and big business, with unabashed greed, deliberately reengineered our economy. To fix that will require understanding the roots of the problem. . . A triumph.
—— Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da VinciEvil Geniuses is a vivid catalog of American sociopolitical history - a dedicated deep dive into this country's paradoxical legacy of innovation and ego, with Andersen as its clear-eyed, masterful archivist.
—— Rebecca Carroll, WNYC cultural critic and host of the podcast Come ThroughWow. Evil Geniuses is engaging, enraging, enthralling, appalling; a true tour de force. And most of all, it's the truth - about how these rapacious bastards have picked this country's bones for the last fifty years, and what the rest of us need to do to turn the tables. . . Exactly the book we need right now.
—— Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast columnist and author of If We Can Keep ItBack when the idea of President Reagan still seemed a stretch and President Trump was barely a joke, some serious, smart, committed people with vast appetites and little shame - right-wing intellectuals and billionaires, CEOs and Washington hustlers - launched a long war to create a paradigm shift and rewrite our social contract to their benefit. Andersen's dazzling, mind-bending, must-read chronicle of that fifty-year crusade explains how it happened, why it succeeded, and, unsettlingly, what that victory means: America is now theirs.
—— John Heilemann, co-host of Showtime’s The Circus, co-author of Game Change and Double DownHow did the United States turn from its long-standing egalitarian ideals to its present course of socially and morally catastrophic inequality? Kurt Andersen interrogates the past half century with characteristic intellectual ambition and literary bravado to find out. At once cultural history, memoir, and riff, Evil Geniuses explains how our country found its way into this predicament, and how we might yet get out of it.
—— Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy and Ronald ReaganGeorge Packer [is] arguably the most renowned American journalist of his generation… Our Man may be the most vivid tour of America’s foreign delusions that has been offered since the Vietnam War.
—— Samuel Moyn , London Review of Books[Packer] is such a masterful narrator – and Holbrooke such a vexing subject to portray – that this story is both gripping and surprisingly pacey, its wheels greased by revealing excerpts from Holbrooke's personal letters and the private reflections he recorded to tape. Added to this is Packer's arresting thesis: that his brash but erudite and driven subject symbolises something about America's engagement with the world following the Second World War that will never be recovered after Trump.
—— John Bew , New StatesmanA brazen book, one that buttonholes the reader…in just the way that its subject did… So perfectly has Packer captured his [Holbrooke’s] style that there is no sense of discontinuity when the subject himself takes over as author… Enthralling… Our Man is unputdownable.
—— Niall Ferguson , Sunday TimesBrilliant reporting… brave and intellectually honest… This is the kind of biography (massive, detailed) by the kind of author (respected, experienced) reserved for great books on great men.
—— Adam B. Kushner , Washington PostPacker’s portrait is so full because he… [is] a first-rate reporter and writer who understands the history of the big conflicts at the centre of his story: Vietnam, Bosnia and Afghanistan… A vivid biography.
—— Lawrence Freedman , Literary ReviewThe story has been told many times… but it has never been told as George Packer tells it… Our Man is a nuanced portrait of a driven man whose brilliance was held back by his almost comical insecurities… Packer is an accomplished reporter and careful writer, and he manages to sketch out the three conflicts at the heart of Holbrooke’s career – Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan – with subtlety and texture.
—— Toby Vogel , Times Literary SupplementA brilliant, abrasive diplomat struggles to resolve foreign conflicts while fighting bureaucratic wars at home in this scintillating biography… Packer makes him a Shakespearean character—egomaniacal, devious, sloppy enough to make presidents deny him the prize of becoming secretary of state, yet charismatic and inspiring—in a larger-than-life portrait brimming with vivid novelistic impressions… In Holbrooke’s thwarted ambitions, Packer finds both a riveting tale of diplomatic adventure—part high drama, part low pettiness—and a captivating metaphor for America’s waning power.
—— Publishers Weekly (starred review)By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself.
—— David M. Shribman , Boston GlobeThe riveting life of a deeply flawed diplomat whose chief shortcoming seems to have been the need to be more recognized than he was... Students of recent world history and of American power, hard and soft, will find this an endlessly fascinating study of character and events.
—— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)It is impossible to read George Packer’s new biography of Richard Holbrooke without a piercing sense of melancholy, not only that a man so supremely alive should be dead, but also because such people — Our Man, in Packer’s title, the incarnation of vanished glory, imperial hubris, exceptional Americanism — no longer walk the earth… Extraordinary.
—— James Traub , Foreign PolicyStunning... If you’re one of the dozens of people running for president, the book is probably the best guide you can find to navigating a transitional moment in American leadership and foreign policy. For the rest of us, it’s a gripping read, and a sad one.
—— Ben Smith , BuzzFeed NewsThrough a depiction that may be likened to Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, Packer analyzes the forces of character that led us from a commitment to unity to the chaotic division in which we find ourselves today.
—— Lauren LeBlanc , The Observer’s "16 Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2019"Best appreciated like a novel, consumed whole… charming, brilliant, cocksure.
—— Jennifer Szalai , New York TimesLike Holbrooke, Packer’s account barrels along, brimming with mischief, verve and a sense of history. Unlike Holbrooke, it is tender and self-aware.
—— Tom Fletcher , ProspectAn endlessly engaging biography.
—— Jefferson Morley , Pak BankerOur Man… [is] a fascinating examination of the (few) successes and (many) failures of US foreign policy over the last fifty years.
—— Keith Richmond , ASLEF Journal[Our Man is] heartfelt, virtuosic and quietly thoughtful at the same time
—— Daily TelegraphIsabel Wilkerson's book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don't miss it!
—— Cornel WestA landmark piece of non-fiction
—— The New York TimesA briliant and stirring epic
—— Wall Street JournalThe mass migration of African Americans out of the US south forever changed the country's cultural fabric - and Wilkerson's history of this period is full of sacrifice and hope ...a long overdue account
—— GuardianA deeply affecting, finely crafted and heroic book. . . .Wilkerson has taken on one of the most important demographic upheavals of the past century and told it through the lives of three people ... lyrical and tragic
—— Jill Lepore , New Yorker