UNITED STATES AUTHOR · BIOGRAPHY · POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
Matt Taibbi
Matthew Colin Taibbi (; born March 2, 1970) is an American author, journalist and podcaster. A former contributing editor for Rolling Stone, he is the author of several books and publisher of Racket News (formerly TK News). He has reported on finance, media, politics and sports. Taibbi began as a freelance reporter working in Russia. He later worked as a sports journalist for the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times.
They rose before dawn and stepped out beneath a moonless sky aswarm with stars.
— from The divide
Most acclaimed
The Great Derangement
A REVELATORY AND DARKLY COMIC ADVENTURE THROUGH A NATION ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN--FROM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS TO THE BASES OF BAGHDAD TO THE APOCALYPTIC CHURCHES OF THE HEARTLANDRolling Stone's Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush's America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off--or radicalized--by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders ("they hate us for our freedom") that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places.Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.
The divide
"More than four billion people--some 60 percent of humanity--live in debilitating poverty, on less than $5 per day. The standard narrative tells us this crisis is a natural phenomenon, having to do with climate, geography, and culture. It tells us all we have to do is give aid to help poor countries up the development ladder. If poor countries would only adopt the right institutions and economic policies, they could join the ranks of the rich world. Anthropologist Jason Hickel argues that this story ignores the broader political forces at play. Global poverty--and the growing inequality between the rich countries of Europe and North America and the poor ones of Africa, Asia, and South America--has come about because the global economy has been designed over the course of five centuries to favor the interests of the most powerful nations. Global inequality is not natural, inevitable, or accidental. To close the divide, Hickel proposes dramatic action rooted in real justice: abolishing debt burdens in the global South, democratizing the institutions of global governance, and rolling out an international minimum wage, among other steps. Only then will we have a chance at a world built on equal footing."--Jacket flap.
Griftopia
The financial crisis that exploded in 2008 was only a prologue. The rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class--made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding--has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms and political maneuvers. The crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they've hijacked America's political and economic life. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi here unravels the story, digging beyond the headlines to get into the deeper roots and wider implications. He traces the movement's origins to Ayn Rand and her most influential acolyte, Alan Greenspan; he uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world; and he shows how finance dominates politics with an inside account of the high-stakes battle for health-care reform--a battle the true reformers lost.--From publisher description.