In colonial New York and Charleston, governors extended an open hand to pirates that was gladly filled in exchange for a safe haven to unload booty. The Revolutionary War was fought by ill-equipped and often hungry soldiers freezing on battlefields like Valley Forge while merchants and speculators sat down to sumptuous 169-dish dinners in Philadelphia, their warehouses full of supplies they sold at markups of up to 2,000 percent. But even George Washington amassed one of the largest fortunes in America through some highly dubious land speculation practices. This thievery continued on through the nineteenth century with land swindles and railroad giveaways that ripped off both Native Americans and settlers; with the great robber barons of the railroad and banking industries, men like Cornelius Vanderbilt who made nine million during the Civil War outfitting completely unseaworthy vessels for huge profits; and with New York's inimitable Boss Tweed and his Forty Thieves. Casting his seasoned eye over this century's boondoggles, Nathan Miller uncovers the paybacks, markups, and skim scams of Harding and the Teapot Dome in the roaring twenties, the New Deal, World War II, and the Cold War. With Iran-Contra, HUD, and the Savings and Loan debacle in tow, the Reagan-Bush legacy follows in a grand tradition. It promises to be remembered as one of the greatest eras of free-for-all plunder of the nation's coffers and threatens to put to shame, in terms of dollars pocketed, if not pilfering panache, the money-grabbing greed of its illustrious predecessors. Stealing from America shows that greed, more so than the oft-trumpeted noti From The Critics Publishers Weekly Miller ( Spying in America ) argues mischievously that the graft-taking politician, the fleecing business tycoon, and the crooked labor baron each ``played a vital role in the development of modern American society.'' In this appalling, sometimes painfully amusing chronicle of greed, he spends little time judging the guilty, preferring to describe in colorful, lively prose how a gallery of rascals perpetrated grand larcency on the national and big-city levels and, for the most part, got away with it. One who didn't, however, was William Marcy ``Boss'' Tweed, who siphoned millions from New York City coffers. Miller comments on the irony of Tweed's imprisonment: ``Here he was behind bars while Astor, Vanderbilt, Gould and others whose thefts were greater than his were regarded as wizards of finance to be praised and emulated.'' The author nominates the Reagan administration as perhaps the most corrupt in U.S. history, one that, he claims, combined the old-fashioned graft of the Grant and Harding eras with an undisguised grabbing for power ``that would have done credit to Richard Nixon.'' (Aug.) Library Journal In this revised edition of The Founding Finaglers ( LJ 5/1/76), Miller tells the story of ``larceny on the national level'' from the land speculators and venal crown governors of the early colonial period through Teapot Dome to the open criminality of Watergate and the legal and illegal manipulations of the S&L scandal and Iran-Contra dealings. The majority of the book discusses the pre-1900 period; two new chapters treat mainly the Nixon and Reagan presidencies.

 Paragon House Publishers 1557783446 / 9781557783448
Hardcover As New Condition New York 

Price: 19.31 USD