Kevin Phillips

Phillips, Kevin P. Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, New York Broadway Books 2003
ISBN: 0767905342 Fine

xxii, 473 pp., illus., biblio., index; 24 cm. AS NEW. "For more than thirty years, Kevin Phillips' insight into American politics and economics has helped to make history as well as record it. His bestselling books, including The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) and The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990), have influenced presidential campaigns and changed the way America sees itself. Widely acknowledging Phillips as one of the nation's most perceptive thinkers, reviewers have called him a latter-day Nostradamus and our 'modern Thomas Paine.' Now, in the first major book of its kind since the 1930s, he turns his attention to the United States' history of great wealth and power, a sweeping cavalcade from the American Revolution to what he calls 'the Second Gilded Age' at the turn of the twenty-first century. The Second Gilded Age has been staggering enough in its concentration of wealth to dwarf the original Gilded Age a hundred years earlier. However, the tech crash and then the horrible events of September 11, 2001, pointed out that great riches are as vulnerable as they have ever been. In Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips charts the ongoing American saga of great wealth - how it has been accumulated, its shifting sources, and its ups and downs over more than two centuries. He explores how the rich and politically powerful have frequently worked together to create or perpetuate privilege, often at the expense of the national interest and usually at the expense of the middle and lower classes. With intriguing chapters on history and bold analysis of present-day America, Phillips illuminates the dangerous politics that go with excessive concentration of wealth. Profiling wealthy Americans - from Astor to Carnegie and Rockefeller to contemporary wealth holders - Phillips provides fascinating details about the peculiarly American ways of becoming and staying a multimillionaire. He exposes the subtle corruption spawned by a money culture and financial power, evident in economic philosophy, tax favoritism, and selective bailouts in the name of free enterprise, economic stimulus, and national security. Finally, Wealth and Democracy turns to the history of Britain and other leading world economic powers to examine the symptoms that signaled their declines - speculative finance, mounting international debt, record wealth, income polarization, and disgruntled politics - signs that we recognize in America at the start of the twenty-first century. In a time of national crisis, Phillips worries that the growing parallels suggest the tide may already be turning for us all. / KEVIN PHILLIPS has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades. He is currently a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio, and also writes for Harper's Magazine and Time. The author of nine other books, most recently The Cousins' Wars, he lives in Litchfield, Connecticut." - Publisher. First edition thus Trade Paperback 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

[SW: Wealth United States, Political corruption United States, Representative government and representation United States, United States Politics and Government]

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Phillips, Kevin P.. Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics; Arrogant Capital. Little Brown & Co (T), 1994.
; Remainder marked, else as new hardcover x "1" 0.; 9.5 x 1.25 x 6.75 Inches; 231 pp; Everyone knows that Washington is completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Now Kevin Phillips, whose bestselling books have prophesied the major watersheds of American party politics, tells us why. Washington - mired in bureaucracy, captured by the money power of Wall Street, and dominated by 90,000 lobbyists, 60,000 lawyers, and the largest concentration of special interests the world has ever seen - has become the albatross that Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers feared: a swollen capital city feeding off the country it should be governing. Throughout most of our history, the genius of American politics was that ballot revolutions every generation swept out failed establishments and created new ones. Now that can no longer happen. Feared and even hated by a majority of the citizenry, "Permanent Washington" has dug in. Using history as a chilling warning, Kevin Phillips parallels the present atrophy to that of formerly mighty and arrogant capitals like Rome, Madrid, and Amsterdam. Unchecked, Washington will - like other great powers before it - lead the country to its inevitable decline and fall. To work again, Washington must be purged and revitalized. In his unique blueprint for a political upheaval, Kevin Phillips puts Washington on notice by sounding a cry for immediate action, offering us a wide variety of remedies - some quasi-revolutionary, others more moderate, but all sure to be controversial.. 0316706183.

Hardcover, VG/New.

[SW: State & Local Government Government Nonfiction Books Politics Practical Politics Political Science Social Sciences,]

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Phillips, Kevin P. Arrogant Capital Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics, Little Brown & Co (T) 1994
0316706183

Hardcover Great Value. Prompt delivery with tracking. Many satisfied customers. Satisfaction guaranteed. ; 1 x 9.2 x 6.1 Inches; 231 pages; Everyone knows that Washington is completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Now Kevin Phillips, whose bestselling books have prophesied the major watersheds of American party politics, tells us why. Washington - mired in bureaucracy, captured by the money power of Wall Street, and dominated by 90,000 lobbyists, 60,000 lawyers, and the largest concentration of special interests the world has ever seen - has become the albatross that Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers feared: a swollen capital city feeding off the country it should be governing. Throughout most of our history, the genius of American politics was that ballot revolutions every generation swept out failed establishments and created new ones. Now that can no longer happen. Feared and even hated by a majority of the citizenry, "Permanent Washington" has dug in. Using history as a chilling warning, Kevin Phillips parallels the present atrophy to that of formerly mighty and arrogant capitals like Rome, Madrid, and Amsterdam. Unchecked, Washington will - like other great powers before it - lead the country to its inevitable decline and fall. To work again, Washington must be purged and revitalized. In his unique blueprint for a political upheaval, Kevin Phillips puts Washington on notice by sounding a cry for immediate action, offering us a wide variety of remedies - some quasi-revolutionary, others more moderate, but all sure to be controversial. As New in As New dust jacket

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Phillips, Kevin P. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, Harmondsworth Penguin Books 2004
ISBN: 0143034316 Fine

xiv, 397 pp., bib. notes, index; 22 cm. AS NEW. "The Bushes are the family nobody really knows, says Kevin Phillips. This popular lack of acquaintance - nurtured by gauzy imagery of Maine summer cottages, gray-haired national grandmothers, July Fourth sparklers, and cowboy boot - has let national politics create a dynasticized presidency that would have horrified America's founding fathers. They, after all, had led a revolution against a succession of royal Georges. In this devastating book, onetime Republican strategist Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes have ascended the ladder of national power since World War One, becoming entrenched within the American establishment - Yale, Wall Street, the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency, and the presidency - through a recurrent flair for old-boy networking, national security involvement, and political deception. By uncovering relationships and connecting facts with new clarity, Phillips comes to a stunning conclusion: The Bush family has systematically used its financial and social empire - its 'aristocracy' - to gain the White House, thereby subverting the very core of American democracy. In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with brilliant timing, twisting and turning from silver spoon Yankees to born-again evangelical Texans. As America - and the world - holds its breath for the 2004 presidential election, American Dynasty explains how it happened and what it all means. / Kevin Phillips has been a political and economic commentator for more than three decades. A former White House strategist, he is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and NPR and writes for Harper's and Time. His books include New York Times bestsellers The Politics of Rich and Poor and Wealth and Democracy." - Publisher. Contents: Preface -- Introduction -- pt. 1. Family, Dynasty, and restoration -- ch. 1. The not-quite-royal family -- ch. 2. The dynastization of America -- ch. 3. The first American restoration -- pt. 2. Crony capitalism, covert operations, and compassionate conservatism -- ch. 4. Texanomics and compassionate conservatism -- ch. 5. The Enron-Halliburton administration -- ch. 6. Armaments and men : the Bush dynasty and the national security state -- pt. 3. Religion, oil, armaments, and war -- ch. 7. The American presidency and the rise of the Religious Right -- ch. 8. Indiana Bush and the axis of evil -- ch. 9. The wars of the Texas succession -- Afterword : Machiavelli and the American dynastic moment -- Acknowledgments -- appendix A. Armaments and the Walker-Bush Family, 1914-40 -- appendix B. Deception, dissimulation, and disinformation -- Notes -- Index. First paperback edition Trade Paperback 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

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