The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Elite

The story Americans are wont to tell themselves about their nation is a compelling one: the United States is a force for good in the world, a haven for prosperous upward mobility, and a stalwart defender of democracy and human rights abroad. With The Racket, veteran investigative journalist Matt Kennard pulls back the curtain and reveals a much darker truth. The picture of America he paints is radically at odds with that noble image: through Kennard’s eyes we see another America, one that has lashed the world to a neoliberal vision and has rewarded wealthy elites at the expense of ordinary people, genuine freedom, and the global environment. Building his case from more than 2,000 interviews with officials, intellectuals, and artists around the world, Kennard reveals how we are sold a dream and how that dream obscures the reality of the corporate state, mass incarceration, and the evisceration of human rights. “In this important book, Kennard explores the direct impacts of militarized, globalized American capitalism on some of the most battered parts of our world. Most importantly, he never loses sight of the growing numbers of resistors holding on to their creativity and self-determination in the face of these forces.”—Naomi Klein “Brings home in vivid and illuminating detail the reality of life and struggles of much of the world’s population, their defeats and victories, their suffering and vitality and hope.”—Noam Chomsky