Rachel Maddow – författare

The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war. Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow''s Drift argues that we''ve drifted away from America''s original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we''ve arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today''s war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan''s radical presidency, the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the scope of American military power to overpower our political discourse.    Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seri­ously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about our vast and confounding national security state.

In 2010, the words "earthquake swarm" entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia-including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove-was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia's rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West's most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, "like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can't really blame the lion. It's in her nature." Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world's most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, "Democracy either wins this one or disappears."

Brought to you by Penguin.** Winner of the 2021 GRAMMY® Best Spoken Word Album **Award-winning American news presenter Rachel Maddow investigates remarkable stories from around the globe, all leading back to the same crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry. From Oklahoma, Texas and Washington, to Kyiv, Siberia and Moscow, to Equatorial Guinea and Alaska; from a mansion in Malibu with the world''s largest collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia to luxury hotels in central London; from deep within the earth''s crust to the icy surface of the Arctic seas, Blowout uncovers a web of international corruption. With her trademark black humour, Maddow takes us through the purposeful detonation of a fifty-kiloton nuclear bomb underground near Colarado, man-made earthquakes, murdered cows and the international financial crisis, to the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas, and a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, "like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can''t really blame the lion. It''s in her nature."Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world''s most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, "Democracy either wins this one or disappears."© Rachel Maddow 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020