Mr. Book just finished Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists And Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around The World, by Casey Michel.

This book is about “Those Americans selling their services to the highest bidders abroad, all in order to entrench and enlarge the most brutal governments on the planet—the Americans who, as one scholar wrote, help ‘make the world safe for dictatorship.’ Safe for the regimes responsible for ethnic cleansings and genocides. Safe for the world’s most horrific environmental crimes and anti-LGBTQ abuses. Safe, in sum, for the most successful expansion of dictatorship the world has seen in nearly a century.”

The book starts with a look at Ivy Lee, who was the pioneer of using “public relations” in order to whitewash corporate malfeasance, who then decided to apply his talents to helping foreign governments, no matter how oppressive, to clean up their images. It also takes a look at how the 2016 election wasn’t the first time the Russians attempted to influence a US election and how they have a consistent pattern dating back to Truman’s reelection in 1948. There is also plenty of Paul Manafort, as well as so much more about the first Trump term.

I give this book an A+ and inducted it into the Hall of Fame. After I finished it, I also got the audiobook.

Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.

Mr. Book finished reading this on November 13, 2024.