Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy

Whitehouse, Sheldon

A leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee "spells out, in considerable detail, the extent of corporate influence over a variety of issues" in national politics (The New Yorker)

As a U.S. senator and former federal prosecutor, Sheldon Whitehouse has had a front-row seat for the spectacle of dark money in government. In his widely praised book Captured, he describes how corporations buy influence over our government— not only over representatives and senators, but over the very regulators directly responsible for enforcing the laws under which these corporations operate, and over the judges and prosecutors who are supposed to be vigilant about protecting the public interest.

In a case study that shows these operations at work, Whitehouse reveals how fossil fuel companies have held any regulation related to climate change at bay. The problem is structural: as Kirkus Reviews wrote, "many of the ills it illuminates are bipartisan."

This paperback edition features a new preface by the author that reveals how corporate influence has taken advantage of Donald Trump's presidency to advance its agenda—and what we can do about it.