The Racket

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.