The Big Con

"Chait is both very serious and seriously funny as he traces the rise of conservatism over the past thirty years." -- Michael Kinsley, Time Magazine American politics has been hijacked. Over the past three decades, a fringe group of economic hucksters has corrupted and perverted our nation's policies. With dark, engaging wit, Jonathan Chait reveals how these canny zealots first took over the Republican Party and then gamed the political system and the media so that once unthinkable policies -- without a shred of academic, expert, or even popular support -- now drive the political agenda, regardless of which party is in power. Why have these ideas succeeded in Washington? How did a clique of extremists gain control of American economic policy and sell short the country's future? And why do their outlandish ideas still determine policy despite repeated electoral setbacks? Chait tells the outrageous and eye-opening story, expertly explaining just how politics and economics work in Washington. Through vivid portraits of perfidious politicians and pseudo-economists, with wry analyses of their bogus theories, Chait gives us the tools to understand what's really behind economic policy debates in Washington: a riveting drama of greed and deceit. Jonathan Chait is senior editor at the New Republic and writes the magazine's signature TRB column. A contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times, he has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, American Prospect, and Reason. He lives in Washington, D.C. David Drummond has made his living as an actor for over twenty years, primarily in voice-overs. He won an AudioFile Earphones Award for his first audiobook, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, and has also narrated Conquering Gotham by Jill Jonnes and The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker.