American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class

His books include Plutocracy in America: How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor, The Tea Party: A Brief History , and For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s . Bryan Chair of American History and professor emeritus of history at the University of Kentucky

Wright Mills, American Oligarchy demonstrates the way the corrupt culture of the permanent political class extends down to the state and local level. As Formisano shows, these forces respond to the oligarchy 's power and compete to bask in the presence of the .01 percent. They also exacerbate the dangerous instability of an American democracy divided between extreme wealth and extreme poverty.. In a muckraking tour de force reminiscent of Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, and C. That inequality in turn has choked off social mobility and made a joke of meritocracy. Their shameless pursuit of wealth and self-aggrandizement, often at taxpayer expense, rewards channeling the flow of income and wealth to elites. A permanent political class has emerged on a scale unprecedented in our nation 's history. Its reach extends from the governing elite t

"A desperately needed contribution to political education for those citizens and political pundits seeking to gain a better understanding of the impact of the latest massive shift in economic and political power and struggling to overcome the antidemocratic consequences of the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of so few. Yanarella, author of North American Auto Unions in Crisis: Lean Production as Contested Terrain . In combining sure theoretical and conceptual political and historical analysis with example after example and case study after case study of rising plutocrats and their political minions reshaping our body politic, Formisano strips away the myths and illusions of mainstream apologists of our