Greg Palast digs deep to unearth the ugly facts that few reporters working anywhere in the world today have the courage or ability to cover. From East Timor to Waco, Karachi to Santiago, he has exposed some of the most egregious cases of political corruption, corporate fraud, and financial manipulation, globally. His uncanny investigative skills as well as his acerbic wit and no-holds-barred style have made him an anathema among magnates on four continents and a living legend among his colleagues and his devoted readership, worldwide. This exciting new collection brings together some of Palast's most powerful and influential writing of the past decade. His columns in the Observer have a cult following and he made headline news when he went undercover for the Observer to break open the 'Lobbygate' scandal of corruption inside the Blair Cabinet. Included here are his reports on that story, which earned him the distinction of being the first journalist ever to be personally attacked on the floor of Parliament by a prime minister; his celebrated Washington Post exposé on Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris's stealing of the presidential election in Florida, which made him "a legend and a hero on the Internet" (Alan Colmes / Fox Radio) when it ran in Salon.com; and recent stories on George W. Bush's pay-offs to corporate cronies, and the business-created 'energy crisis.' Also included in this volume are new and previously unpublished material, television transcripts, photographs, and letters.

Renowned investigative journalist Richard Behar delivers the definitive account of history’s largest—and longest-running—financial fraud, “the scale of the deception…beggars belief” ( New York Post ). Some $68 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff’s epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme’s exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Richard Behar’s relationship with Madoff began in 2011 with a simple email request from the conman. By the time Madoff died in 2021, he had sent Behar more than 300 emails and dozens of handwritten letters, participated in some fifty phone conversations, and sat for three in-person jailhouse interviews—a level of access provided to no other reporter. Behar also established relationships with hundreds of regulators, prosecutors, FBI agents, investors, Wall Street experts, ex-employees of Madoff’s, family members, school classmates, and others. The result is the final word on the criminal behind history’s most enduring fraud—and on those who believed him, covered for him, or locked him up. Behar illuminates not only the fraud’s origins—decades earlier than Madoff claimed in his confession—but also the complicity of investors, Wall Street insiders, family members, and some of the largest banks in the US and Europe. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar’s dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren’t many innocents left standing by the end of this tale. Just about everyone involved is guilty, at a minimum, of humanity’s most consistent weakness: greed.