The Art of the Steal - by John Perkins Paperback

Book Synopsis

Discover how Trump became America's first domestic economic hit man--targeting citizens with corporate warfare tactics--and learn the urgent steps to save democracy.

When John Perkins wrote Confessions of an Economic Hit Man in 2004, the covert system he exposed operated in distant countries through shadows and backdoor deals. Today, those same tactics--fear, debt, manufactured scarcity, and division--have turned inward against American citizens. And one person embodies this domestic transformation more than any other: Donald Trump.

This isn't partisan politics. Every US president since JFK has deployed economic hit men to execute policy. But Trump is the first to master the playbook himself, applying these techniques to rural America, Rust Belt cities, and the forgotten middle class. Through twenty detailed chapters, Perkins traces how Trump branded the mirage of success, replaced legitimacy with leverage, and politicized truth itself.

Drawing on his decades of work exposing corporatocracy, Perkins reveals the four pillars sustaining this system and offers a path forward for transforming a system turned against itself. For readers alarmed by corporate power, economic inequality, and threats to democracy, this book is both an urgent warning and a roadmap for resistance.

About the Author

John Perkins is the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which spent over seventy weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, sold over 1.8 million copies, and was translated into thirty-seven languages. He also authored Touching the Jaguar, The Secret History of the American Empire, Hoodwinked, and other books. As a former corporate chief economist, he advised the World Bank, the United Nations, Fortune 500 corporations, and many governments worldwide. He was also CEO of a successful alternative energy company. For the past twenty years, he has principally been a writer, speaker, and activist.