P&P Live!: Sarah Chayes – On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake — in conversation with Nancy MacLean

Bringing to bear all of her knowledge, grasp, sense of history and observation, Sarah Chayes shows how the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, as Chayes sees it, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members. On Corruption in America is a major, unflinching book that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future.

Sarah Chayes has served as special assistant on corruption to Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as having advised David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal (commanders of the International Security Assistant Force). She has been a reporter for National Public Radio from Paris, covering Europe and the Balkans. Chayes is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban and Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, winner of the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Nancy MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and the award-winning author of several books, most recently, of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Current Affairs and the Lillian Smith Book Award.