Money, Lies, and God

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Money, Lies, and God by Katherine Stewart, read by Patricia Rodriguez.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS

From the acclaimed author of The Power Worshippers, “an indispensable citizen’s guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right.” —Congressman Jamie Raskin

“An eerily prescient guide to the phantasmagoria of our political moment.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hard-hitting."–Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down. She introduces us to reactionary Catholic activists, atheist billionaires, pseudo-Platonist intellectuals, self-appointed apostles of Jesus, disciples of Ayn Rand, women-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” pronatalists preoccupied with the dearth of white babies, Covid truthers, militia members masquerading as “concerned moms,” and battalions of spirit warriors who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about attacking democracy at its foundations.

Along the way, she provides a compelling analysis of the authoritarian reaction in the United States. She demonstrates that the movement relies on several distinct constituencies, with very different and often conflicting agendas. Stewart’s reporting and comprehensive political analysis helps reframe the conversation about the moral collapse of conservatism in America and points the way toward a democratic future.

Critics Review

An eerily prescient guide to the phantasmagoria of our political moment . . . Money, Lies, and God covers a lot of terrain, but it’s Stewart’s exploration of right-wing ideas that makes her book stand out . . . Books like hers function not as weapons but as maps, navigating a way around the edges of the abyss.
The New York Times Book Review
Organized, clear, and compelling . . . journalism of the highest order . . . an important book and it couldn’t appear at a more opportune time.
California Review of Books
Among the dozens of books that have attempted to identify the forces that Trump rode to power, this is one of the most closely reported and cogent.
Foreign Affairs
[Stewart's] eyewitness account is riveting and will terrify anyone who believes in democratic governance . . . a compelling read.
New Pages
Stewart’s fine-grained and eye-opening investigation meticulously outlines the loose organizational structure that keeps these strange bedfellows banded together . . . offers urgently needed background on the 2024 election results.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An in-depth look at the chief strands that make up the American far right . . . An impassioned takedown of a ‘militant minority.'
Kirkus Reviews
The author of The Power Worshippers, a comprehensive look at the rise of Christian nationalism, widens her scope with this follow-up about the modern far right — an often contradictory group that includes conspiracy theorists, religious extremists, atheist billionaires, meme accounts and mommy militias who have fallen into lock step under the banner of MAGA.
Paperback Row, the New York Times Book Review
Money, Lies, and God provides a compelling overview as well as meticulous research about the funders, leaders, and foot soldiers of religious nationalism . . . [Stewart] brilliantly explores how right-wing think tanks like the Claremont Institute provide a veneer of intellectual respectability to the movement.
Friends Journal
A bracing must-read story of how the varied streams have merged into a mighty river moving toward massive destruction—and explains to readers how together, we can divert it.
Nancy MacLean, author of DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS
Katherine Stewart has written what may be the most important political book of the day, exposing the networks of dark money funded, ultra right-wing subversives who have already done enormous damage to our Constitution and the rule of law and are now perilously close to overthrowing the American government as we know it. With persuasive precision and undeniable documentation, Stewart names and connects the dots, refusing to normalize the frighteningly abnormal, confronting powerful forces that too few reporters comprehend, let alone describe.
Sean Wilentz, author of NO PROPERTY IN MAN and the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University
A stunning, sweeping account of the coordinated movement to destroy the American experiment through dark money, political organizing, ideological distortion, thuggery, and authoritarianism, Money, Lies, and God is required reading for every person who wields a vote. Not since Dorothy Thompson has a writer documented fascist organizing so persuasively and cogently; this book places Katherine Stewart among the most significant journalists of her generation.
Kathleen Belew, author of BRING THE WAR HOME
Katherine Stewart has written a book that pierces through the fog and noise to reveal the dangerous forces gathering, planning and plotting against liberty. She echoes the warnings of Dorothy Thompson about fascism: 'There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, and the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of the happenings.' Stewart hits the mark.
Steve Schmidt, political strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project
Writing here as part investigative journalist, part sociologist and part political philosopher, Katherine Stewart provides an indispensable citizen’s guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right in America. In Money, Lies and God, the whole gang is here in their dubious political glory – anti-Vaxx Internet provocateurs, pro-Putin anti-abortion zealots, authoritarian Harvard Law professors, anti-gay fanatics, billionaire funders like Tom Monaghan and the Koch brothers, crazed neo-fascist thinkers, exurban megachurch power players, Opus Dei, right-wing political bosses, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, Roger Stone and the well-paid apparatus of political and juridical reaction and corruption. This is a vibrant ideological ecosystem but Stewart explains why the vast majority of Americans must reject its dark vision and defeat its politicians.
Congressman Jamie Raskin
Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hard-hitting, Money Lies and God provides a riveting account of the forces that have brought our nation to the brink. If this book comes too late to save our democracy, it will offer the definitive postmortem.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE
From the halls of Congress and state legislative buildings to the city council chambers and school boards of your town, America’s democracy is under threat as never before. How did we get here? In this powerful piece of investigative journalism, Katherine Stewart uses good, old-fashioned digging to provide the answer. Stewart follows the money, exposes the major players, identifies the foot soldiers and explains the radical philosophy underlying an alarming scheme by Christian Nationalists and other extremists to replace our democracy with a theocracy. Stewart has laid bare the plot. The next step is up to us.
Rachel K. Laser, President and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State

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