Dark Money

Dark Money is a work of investigative journalism about the wealthy conservative donors who have spent billions of dollars to reshape American politics. Jane Mayer asks why economic inequality keeps widening, why even modest efforts on climate change have been defeated again and again, and why hedge-fund billionaires pay a lower tax rate than middle-class workers.

Her answer centers on a small circle of plutocrats led by the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Olins and the Bradleys. Mayer shows how this group financed a systematic plan to change the American political system at its foundations.

She follows the money through a tangled web of think tanks, academic institutions, media groups, courthouses and allies inside government, all of which have come under the donors' influence. The book rests on hundreds of interviews that Mayer conducted herself, along with public records, private papers and court proceedings. Her portraits of the people behind the network show a secretive new oligarchy and the agendas it has kept hidden.

This edition opens with a new preface. In it Mayer turns to the most recent election and Donald Trump's victory, and argues that the result was a major win for the billionaires who have been pouring money into American politics.

It is non-fiction reporting that suits readers who want to understand how political money works and where American democracy is heading.