100 books like One Nation Under Blackmail Vol. 2

Jeffrey Epstein was a financial wizard who also served as an agent for other wealthy patrons.

With his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the UK media mogul and Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, Epstein followed in the footsteps of previous organizers of extensive blackmail operations such as Roy Cohn, lawyer for communist-hunting US Senator Joe McCarthy and eventually, political mentor of Donald Trump.

This book provides a comprehensive, well-documented Who's Who of all others involved in the grey zone between great wealth, crime, and intelligence.

Accusations of ballot fraud, election challenges, dueling slates of electors, threats of political violence—even a new civil war. It sounds eerily like the 2020 presidential election, but it happened in 1876. The legitimate winner that year was Democrat Samuel Tilden. His rival, Rutherford B. Hayes, who eventually ascended to the presidency, and Tilden both, according to Morris, went to bed on election night, believing Tilden was the winner. The fraud, this time, was initiated, not by the candidate himself, but by Republican operatives behind closed doors who worked to propel Hayes to the top, in exchange for an end to Reconstruction—which led inexorably to the Jim Crow era. 

The bitter battle left Tilden and the country with grievous losses. The country is still recovering.

I’m fascinated by the possibilities presented by post-nation futures. Infomocracy looks at a future where ‘centenals’—groups of 100,000 people without historic nationalist borders—elect an international corporate-affiliated body to govern the world.

High-stakes political intrigue fuels the biggest election in a century as multiple factions battle it out to seize power through the vehicle of futuristic democracy. To me, the highlight of this novel is its exploration of democracy—it’s peppered with paradoxical and intense arguments that are rewarding to engage with, and enhance the richness of its world. 

Though this book was released a few months before the Capitol attack, it provides important details on key trends and events that many missed leading up to January 6. Seth Abramson, a former criminal defense attorney and journalism professor, shows how Trump not only tried to entice foreign leaders of Ukraine to discredit Joe Biden, but conspired with officials in China, Russia, Hungary, and other nations to help him win re-election. Abramson has continued to write ground-breaking articles on his Substack blog, Proof, such as how Trump allegedly worked with planners of Operation Occupy the Capitol to use the occupation to lobby state legislators to change election results.

A librarian friend recommended Lesley Muir’s explosive exposé of the scandal and corruption that underpinned the development of Sydney’s transport networks in the late Nineteenth Century. Spanning the decades immediately preceding Australia’s Federation, Shady Acres uncovers, as Elizabeth Farrelly says in her introduction, "the perennial crookedness of Sydney’s planning." As I immersed myself in 1890s Sydney for my own novel – and with my story and characters focussed on these very men who sat in the New South Wales’  parliament - I found the book provided the sort of rich vein of detail that allowed me to really bring this time and these people to life. 

Everyone knows China has experienced amazingly long and rapid development, but also that in an autocratic country with plenty of laws but no rule of law, corruption is rife. Normally, deeply corrupt countries don’t ‘make it’, but China has, and I found Yuen Yuen Ang’s book an illuminating guide to just how and why a particular form of corruption in China has worked to its advantage. 

She calls this ‘access money’ as opposed to other forms of corruption such as embezzlement, petty bribery, extortion, and thuggery. She shows how to access money while producing perverse and risky outcomes, has actually nurtured investment and growth. It’s an interesting perspective on China’s long economic march since the 1980s, though she concludes that even this form of corruption is now generating problems and changes that will most likely end up undermining Xi Jinping’s China.

Michela Wrong’s story centres on one country, Kenya, and one person, but it resonates throughout the continent and far beyond it – everywhere, where corruption is as systemic, as it is in Kenya. John Githongo, a journalist who fought corruption, was appointed to head an anti–corruption unit by a new president. As in every decent detective novel, involving corruption, the hero discovers that the roots lead to the very top, finds the proof and, after many adventures, publicizes it. Only this is not a novel, though it certainly reads like one. Wrong’s hero is a real person, who did what he did and who suffered for it. This is a story of personal honesty, decency, and courage. But this is also an inside story of how many African societies work. 

I’ll be honest: I read this book out of pure nostalgia. David Baldacci’s novels have sold over 150 million copies, so I wanted to go back to his debut novel to see how it all started, and it didn’t disappoint. Though it had the luck of being released during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the novel lives well on its own merits.

At the time of its release, most political thriller books utilized protagonists fighting on behalf of their president to save the day, but this one turned the tables on its readers and not only made the president the villain but explored the filthy side of politics and the lengths to which administration officials will go to protect the presidency.

I love the way Wolfe brings one of the more arcane areas of the financial markets to life - namely bankruptcy workout - and skewers the greed and ambition of real estate investors in the 1990s.

I’m a huge admirer of Wolfe’s technique of writing a novel using journalistic interviews, and I’m struck by the way he nails the characters and actions when he describes how the bankruptcy process works. And all while keeping the reader absolutely hooked on the narrative.

I go back to Wolfe’s novels again and again, not just to be amused and entertained but to get a real insight into the dark heart and often absurd workings of the financial system.

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith emphasize the desire of leaders to seek political survival after all else. The authors show how democratic and autocratic leaders respond to the political institutions that they are embedded in, by having systemically distinct policy proclivities. The academic version of the theory is in their book The Logic of Political Survival. The Dictators’ Handbook is the version meant for popular consumption. It is full of examples of leaders making policy choices that benefit their political survival at the expense of their own people who they profess to rule for. I assign the book to illustrate the theory in classes in Comparative Politics. The examples in the book, all of which are non-fiction, are always popular with undergraduate students.