Rating: 
Summary: disturbing, yet definitely worth reading
Review: This book has its downfalls. There are spelling errors, etc. Palast is often repetitive and in desperate need of an editor. But the book is great. He's a courageous reporter who insists on getting our the truth. The first chapter about the Florida elections is most disturbing and worth the price of the book alone. What I love is that he's not any liberal crazy man, but he's an investigative reporter by trade, so he backs up his "ridiculous" claims with hard evidence. Depressing, disturbing and hard to read. But isn't that the truth for reading any uncovered lies?
Rating: 
Summary: No Holds Barred
Review: I heard Mr. Palast on a radio interview and just had to get his new book. As we suspected, the government is about as fraudulent as WorldCom and Enron. Palast has no particular partisan bent. Clinton and G.W. Bush are equally skewered. The election fraud of the 2000 Election in Florida will eventually be told after enough time has passed for Americans to handle it. One other fraud that is current right now is why Saudi Arabia is not exposed as an enemy of the U.S.? Bush's relationship with the Saudi oil sheiks is enough to make you retch. And we say Saudi Arabia is tolerant? Only Islam is legal in Saudi Arabia. Some example of tolerance. All is done in the name of the love of money.... and oil. Definite must read.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Review: This book will make you wonder why blacks stand to suffer in the south and why you bother to vote at all. From the Bush brothers to the Koch brothers, this book tells it all. The New World Order is upon us and Greg Palast shows us how we got here, and how the people have been duped by the ultra-rich, ultra-right... oh, and don't bother voting, ES&S and Jr. will do that for you. Mr Miller
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Books Money Can Buy
Review: "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" is a must read for anyone-conservative or liberal-who wants to get a different perspective on what is happening in the world than the one that is consistently portrayed by the consolidated corporate media. While the controversial title of this book implies a liberal critique of Western values and institutions, it actually accomplishes something very different. Veteran investigative reporter, Greg Palast publishes some of the news stories that the consolidated corporate media refuses to report. While some may blanch at the targets of Palast's investigations, which include corrupt politicians, crooked companies, world finance organizations, and the consolidated corporate media, few can deny the accuracy and integrity of his reports. Palast is an independent reporter who originally specialized in racketeering investigations. His methods include scrupulously studying corporate documents, and examining the testimony of whistleblowers, many of whom approach him personally out of disgust toward their parent organizations. Palast does not work for a for-profit media company and is not beholden to corporate interests. This makes him one of the few honest voices in public life. Chief among Palast's exposés is the illegal manner in which Florida Secretary of State, Kathleen Harris, and Governor Jeb Bush illegally denied tens of thousands of African American citizens their right to vote in the 2000 presidential election in Florida. Palast details the methods used by Bush and Harris to exclude eligible African American from voting such as manipulating database records to wrongfully categorize thousands of African Americans as felons, or wrongfully claiming that convicted felons who has completed their sentences in other states could not vote in Florida. Palast also exposes the presidential instructions from the Clinton and Bush (Jr.) administrations that forced dedicated FBI agents to ignore any leads to Saudi terrorists that implicated the Saudi royal family, or people from that region with influential ties to the U.S. government. When it came to investigating Saudi terrorist links, according to Palast, under Clinton investigators were ordered to turn a blind eye, while under bush they were ordered to shut both eyes. While both Clinton and Bush were concerned about alienating a key American ally in the Middle East, Palast demonstrates, that the latter took more excessive steps to suppress the investigation of Saudi terrorists, since many of them had tentative links to his own family business, including those who invested in his first oil company, Arbusto, and those-mainly members of the Bin Laden family-who sat with his father (the first President Bush) on the board of the Carlysle Group. Palast does not believe George W. Bush was complicit in the attacks of September 11th, but he argues that had Clinton and Bush Jr. not interfered in FBI anti-terrorist investigations, the attacks of September 11th might well have been prevented. The most heartbreaking chapter of this book is the one that details how the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank work in concert to systematically destroy vulnerable countries. In nation after nation, Palast details the insidious four-step program these organizations employ ostensibly to provide aid to economically beleaguered nations, when in fact the opposite occurs. In the first step, on condition of providing aid, these organizations demand that countries privatize public infrastructure components such gas, electricity, and water. In the second step, powerful banks buy up the infrastructure components and immediately make them "more efficient" by laying off the bulk of their workers. In the third step, the financiers drastically raise the cost basic materials such as water to an unaffordable level. In the third step, riots predictably occur to protest unaffordable costs of basic living material, and in the fourth step, this becomes an excuse for capital flight, which in turn severely devalues these privatized components. The end result, according to Palast is a few banks and companies get richer from being handed a cost free monopoly that they can squeeze and then discard, while countries that once had a sustainable way of life are rendered destitute. There are, of course some exceptions to this unhappy process. Botswana, for example, simply rejected the IMF altogether. When Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, did the same thing, according to Palast, he faced an American sponsored coup that was reinforced by false or nonexistent coverage in the American consolidated corporate media. What might astound most readers is that predatory acts of privatization in the name of progress are not limited to vulnerable third world nations. In fact, corporate and financial moguls have preyed upon Europe and the United States with mixed results. When privatization of public water works sent prices up several hundred percent in Britain, the citizens of that country simply paid their bills. In San Diego California, however, consumers simply refused to pay their drastically marked up electric bills after that utility was deregulated. Instead, they effectively boycotted their own robbery by paying bills at the old rate and organizing a political movement around the process. Unlike Ecuador, where people were shot and beaten for protesting drastic hikes in the price of drinking water, San Diegans successfully opposed the scheme. The implied conclusion of Palast's research, as noted in the ironic title, is that America and global capitalism are hardly democratic. Their behavior, according to Palast's example is frighteningly similar to that of a loan shark. No matter what they give you, they will always wind up extracting more than you can possibly return. As a result we may be on the verge of experiencing an odd form of historical determinism: the decent from capitalism, back to feudalism. Be warned that much of that material in this book is depressing, as Palast readily acknowledges. But along side the corruption and abuses chronicled here are the stories of countless individuals who either oppose such practices or who covertly assist those who do so. At the end of the book Palast provides numerous resources for anyone who wants to help oppose predatory institutional practices in their communities or other parts of the world.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible.
Review: Wow. By the time I got a quarter of the way through this book, I was already shocked and stunned. I'd pretty much had enough of hearing about the 2000 election and planned on skipping the first chapter; but holy cow if it didn't blow my mind. Palast has done more then lift a rock to show you what's underneath; he's move mountains to get to all the things people are trying to hide. Greg Palast: More Power To You. I don't care who you are or what your thoughts are about politics, corporations, or taxes: pick this up.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding, important information
Review: This is an outstanding book, with a lot of very important information on a wide variety of topics. I thought I had a reasonable awareness of the 2000 elections, of the Exxon-Valdeez, of globalization, and more, but again and again I found a lot of new information that was quite important to understanding the events. Any one of a number of topics in the book would not be disappointing as its own book. He has great sources - for example, a former top official in globalization who was pushed out gives him a lot of information. I very much recommend this book to anyone who has some curiosity about some information that's not well known, but should be. The biggest criticism I have: his style is sometimes - and I wonder if this is to make it more mainstream, the same way Rush Limbaugh puts a lot of entertainment with his politics - pretty sarcastic or over-stylized with name-calling and criticism, to the point it doesn't help his credibility, though I continue to see no real problems with his credibility from what I've read.
Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: eye opener
Review: Packed with detail and concrete evidence. This is an expose of the Florida elections and how they were fixed before the "chad" stuff even began. Jim Crow is alive and well under the hand of the Bush family. Wake up call of the first order. Also a powerful description of the disasterous results of privatization of utilities: ie Enron etc... Connected to the Bush family as well. Clinton doesn't escape Palast's critiques either. Aggressive and passionate.
Rating:
Summary: This book needs to be longer...
Review: ... Palast has done his homework and his sources are valid from what i can tell. he is not a "muckraker"; he exsposes truths that are hard to swallow, as stated previously. many people/critics don't want to hear about the political corruption of our country and others, but that does not change the facts. if you want to keep an open mind and want to see "the other side of the coin", then you need to read this book....
Rating:
Summary: Educational for aware students of geopolitics
Review: Did you ever wonder who owned the World Bank? Did you ever wonder how the Bush stole the election? Did you ever wonder how Enron and "the Power Pirates" fleece the public? The answers are in this book and it is stunning. As usual, money and power are the goals of these ruthless people.
Rating:
Summary: Must read for an american
Review: If you are thinking that this is just another one of those conspiracy books you may want to look again. Greg Palast knows his stuff and has resources to back up many of his claims. The book is an enjoyable read, he provides humor mixed in and he pokes fun at himself. If you think investigative reporting is dead then you should read this book because it exemplifies how a reporting with a little determination is able to discover many eye opening information. This information is almost impossible to get in America so the book is a welcome edition to my library. You should read this if you are:
-A liberal or even a conservativelooking for information
-A journalist
-Studying politics or reporting
-In government
-Looking to read a good book that is not sugar coated
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