Insider trading, pork-barrel projects, and corrupt politicians may all sound distinctly contemporary, but, as Nathan Miller shows in this boisterous romp through the fetid underbelly of history, larceny and greed crossed the ocean with smallpox, prospered gloriously in the New World, and have become a perennial bedrock of American political life. In colonial New York and Charleston, governors extended an open hand to pirates that was gladly filled in exchange for a safe.

Haven to unload booty. The Revolutionary War was fought by ill-equipped and often hungry soldiers freezing on battlefields like Valley Forge while merchants and speculators sat down to sumptuous 169-dish dinners in Philadelphia, their warehouses full of supplies they sold at markups of up to 2,000 percent. But even George Washington amassed one of the largest fortunes in America through some highly dubious land speculation practices. This thievery continued on through.

The nineteenth century with land swindles and railroad giveaways that ripped off both Native Americans and settlers; with the great robber barons of the railroad and banking industries, men like Cornelius Vanderbilt who made nine million during the Civil War outfitting completely unseaworthy vessels for huge profits; and with New York's inimitable Boss Tweed and his Forty Thieves. Casting his seasoned eye over this century's boondoggles, Nathan Miller uncovers the.

Paybacks, markups, and skim scams of Harding and the Teapot Dome in the roaring twenties, the New Deal, World War II, and the Cold War. With Iran-Contra, HUD, and the Savings and Loan debacle in tow, the Reagan-Bush legacy follows in a grand tradition. It promises to be remembered as one of the greatest eras of free-for-all plunder of the nation's coffers and threatens to put to shame, in terms of dollars pocketed, if not pilfering panache, the money-grabbing greed of.

Its illustrious predecessors. Stealing from America shows that greed, more so than the oft-trumpeted notions of democracy and freedom, has been the fuel on which the engine of American government has run.