The New York Times's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist reveals how the financial meltdown emerged from the toxic interplay of Washington, Wall Street, and corrupt mortgage lenders.

In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.

Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco.

Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster.

Character-rich and definitive in its analysis, this is the one account of the financial crisis you must read.

The name Jack Abramoff is synonymous with Washington scandal, but the fascinating facts of his case are either largely unknown or wildly misunderstood. His memoir will serve as a corrective - an engrossing, informative work of political nonfiction that is also a gripping real-life thriller. The biggest surprise twist comes in the form of Abramoff himself, a smart, funny, charming, clear-eyed narrator who confounds every expectation of the media's villainous portrait. He's a perfect bundle of contradictions: an Orthodox Jew and upstanding family man with a staunch moral streak, caught in multiple scandals of bribery and corruption with an undercurrent of murder. Abramoff represented Indian tribes whose lucrative casinos were constantly under threat from proposed changes in law; though he charged the tribes many millions, he saved them billions by ensuring votes to support the livelihoods of their reservations. Much of Jack's share was funneled not into his own coffers, but to charities. Abramoff on the front pages could not be further from the Jack Abramoff who's ready to tell his honest and compelling story.

From its inception, Atlantic City has always been a town dedicated to the fast buck, and this wide-reaching history offers a riveting account of its past 100 years—from the city's heyday as a Prohibition-era mecca of lawlessness to its rebirth as a legitimate casino resort in the modern era. A colorful cast of characters, led by Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, populates this stranger-than-fiction account of corrupt politics and the toxic power structure that grew out of guile, finesse, and extortion. Atlantic City's shadowy past—through its rise, fall, and rebirth—is given new light in this revealing, and often appalling, study of legislative abuse and organized crime.

In 1890s New Orleans, three unusual men cross paths: Reynard LaCroix, his lycanthropy in remission with a silver bullet lodged against his heart; Artémius Savoy, a lapsed secular priest keeping vigil over Reynard's progress; and Mahonri Grant, a Mormon gunslinger on the run.

Brought together by murder, united in a common cause, they pursue an unholy creature to save a young woman's life.

Their dangerous road leads to the dark jungles of Borneo, where awaits an abhorrent mansion in the wilderness. There they must confront a host of the undead...and face the demons within themselves.

In 1890s New Orleans, three unusual men cross paths: Reynard LaCroix, his lycanthropy in remission with a silver bullet lodged against his heart; Artémius Savoy, a lapsed secular priest keeping vigil over Reynard's progress; and Mahonri Grant, a Mormon gunslinger on the run.

Brought together by murder, united in a common cause, they pursue an unholy creature to save a young woman's life.

Their dangerous road leads to the dark jungles of Borneo, where awaits an abhorrent mansion in the wilderness. There they must confront a host of the undead...and face the demons within themselves.

• ISBN13: 9781595584267
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Sends chills down the spine. . . . After reading this, we can no longer afford to turn a blind eye.
--Le Point

The result of a remarkable three-year-long investigation that took award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin across four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia), The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant--the world's leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)--and how its new "green" face is no less malign than its PCB- and Agent Orange-soaked past.

Robin reports that, following its long history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals and lethal herbicides, Monsanto is now marketing itself as a "life sciences" company, seemingly convinced about the virtues of sustainable development. However, Monsanto now controls the majority of the yield of the world's genetically modified corn and soy--ingredients found in more than 95 percent of American households--and its alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the subject of worldwide concern.

Released to great acclaim and controversy in France, throughout Europe, and in Latin America alongside the documentary film of the same name, The World According to Monsanto is sure to change the way we think about food safety and the corporate control of our food supply.

A Russian politician and high level Western Oil Executive have been assassinated within minutes of each other. Their murders become inadvertently linked through the everyday work of an oil analyst, Jonathan Marshall. A leak of Jonathan's work causes consternation at the highest levels of Governments, business and beyond, sparking deployment of assassins and agents to silence the source and prevent the uncovering of global corruption in the oil industry. With his life in danger, Jonathan battles to discover the truth and stay alive...

This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. In the 1980s they controlled more than fifty percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive -- supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a rag tag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings as they stumbled from small-time suitcase smuggling to levels of unimaginable sophistication and daring. The $2 billion dollar system eventually became so complex that it required the manipulation of world leaders, corruption of revolutionary movements and the worst kind of violence to protect.

Guy Gugliotta is a former national reporter for The Washington Post and foreign correspondent for The Miami Herald. He is currently based in New York, where he writes about science, history and Latin America for magazines and newspapers, among them Smithsonian, Wired, Discover and The New York Times. He is the author of the forthcoming Freedom’s Cap, the Building of the U.S. Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War, to be published in early 2012 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Jeff Leen is the investigations editor for The Washington Post. As a reporter or an editor, he has worked on investigations have have been honored with seven Pulitzer Prizes. He is also the author of The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds and the Making of an American Legend.

This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. In the 1980s they controlled more than fifty percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive -- supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a rag tag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings as they stumbled from small-time suitcase smuggling to levels of unimaginable sophistication and daring. The $2 billion dollar system eventually became so complex that it required the manipulation of world leaders, corruption of revolutionary movements and the worst kind of violence to protect.

Guy Gugliotta is a former national reporter for The Washington Post and foreign correspondent for The Miami Herald. He is currently based in New York, where he writes about science, history and Latin America for magazines and newspapers, among them Smithsonian, Wired, Discover and The New York Times. He is the author of the forthcoming Freedom’s Cap, the Building of the U.S. Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War, to be published in early 2012 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Jeff Leen is the investigations editor for The Washington Post. As a reporter or an editor, he has worked on investigations have have been honored with seven Pulitzer Prizes. He is also the author of The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds and the Making of an American Legend.

Americans have come to tolerate, embrace and even champion many things that would have horrified their parents' generation-from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion-on-demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade-schoolers. Does that mean today's Americans are inherently more morally confused and depraved than previous generations? Of course not, says veteran journalist David Kupelian. But they have fallen victim to some of the most stunningly brilliant and compelling marketing campaigns in modern history.

The Marketing of Evil reveals how much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped and sold to them as though it had great value. Highly skilled marketers, playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity and tolerance, have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which all previous generations since America's founding regarded as grossly self-destructive-in a word, evil.