Wholesale American Exception: Empire and the Deep State

Through a history of the Cold War and of the buildup of the security state, author Aaron Good traces the formation of what can be called the 'deep state.' Though the term has been badly abused in recent years, Good employs the term to refer to the elements of government and institutions that exert undemocratic control over society, partaking in numerous well-documented aggressions and criminal acts such as violent interventions in foreign governments, collaboration with organized crime, assassinations, and other underhanded means of expanding American imperialism and countering nascent socialist or communist governments across the globe. Good exposes this lawlessness with an eye towards the possibilities for repairing American democracy in the wake of a reckoning with our sordid past. (medium discount)