The American Founders planned for a republic and feared its corruption. Jay Cost thinks their fears are coming true. His new book reveals that big government has promoted corruption that favors the privileged over the many, corruption that is both legal and too often accepted.

Cost argues that politicians today have professionalized the pathways of corruption so thoroughly that they can more easily defy detection, and, barring that, retain plausible deniability. From the 18th century to today, Cost traces the history of how America ceased being a republic and became a special‐​interest democracy.

Will the 2016 elections bring change? Cost’s sweeping history of American political corruption does not spare the age of Obama. He demonstrates that a president who promised to change the system became a willing participant, as did both parties in the U.S. Congress—at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to taxpayers.

Please join us for a disturbing portrait of a nation fostering and fighting political decline.