'Dark Money,' by Jane Mayer - 2016-01-19

'Dark Money,' by Jane Mayer January 19, 2016, Alan Ehrenhalt, New York Times

---

It is this conservative ascendancy that Jane Mayer chronicles in "Dark Money." The book is written in straightforward and largely unemotional prose, but it reads as if conceived in quiet anger. Mayer believes that the Koch brothers and a small number of allied plutocrats have essentially hijacked American democracy, using their money not just to compete with their political adversaries, but to drown them out.

A staff writer for The New Yorker, ­Mayer spent five years working on "Dark Money," which originated with an article on the Koch family she published in the magazine in 2010. Neither Charles nor David Koch agreed to talk to her, and several of the most important figures in their political network were unavailable. But she reached hundreds of sources who did want to talk: longtime conservative campaign operatives, business associates, political opponents and political finance scholars. Some of these sources spoke on the record and some did not, but all in all "Dark Money" emerges as an impressively reported and well-documented work.

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | first = Alan | last = Ehrenhalt | title = 'Dark Money,' by Jane Mayer | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer.html | work = New York Times | date = January 19, 2016 | accessdate = October 18, 2018 }}