A dense, but rewarding history of how the lobby industry came to invade, pervade, and overtake the American political system. There are a lot of names to juggle in one's brain while reading this, but the Mullins brothers have taken what could have been a dry walkthrough and instead crafted a political thriller full of intrigue and twists. As a whole, I found this much more illuminating and informative than I would have originally thought. One minor quibble: The chapters tend to end around the same line - some variation of "little did he know..." - which became overly repetitive when working through large chunks of the book in one sitting.

A very thorough history of Washington's lobbying establishment, from its rise to the present. It is very well researched and detailed, sometimes to a fault – despite the blurbs, I would not classify this book as "narrative nonfiction". Although well written, it does not read like a novel. But if you want to have a deep understanding of what went wrong in US politics and how exactly it happened – it will be a perfect, reliable source of information.

Thanks to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review. This book was excellent and I appreciated it a lot — I think all Americans should be aware of the way our government has worked (and hasn’t) in recent history. I wanted more discussion here of financial services and the 2008 financial crisis, but I still appreciated the journalistic approach it took and the way it focused on key individuals and their contributions to the lobbying apparatus that is so powerful today.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and Brody and Luke Mullins for providing me the opportunity to read this book prior to publication.

I would like to start off by being transparent and admitting that this is the first informative book that I’ve read since college. I typically like to escape the world and dive into fantasy lands with what I read, however I saw this book listed on NG and was immediately interested. I've been wanting to become more financially and politically literate. Both in my personal finances and political investments, but also financial and political history and the summary seemed to hit that nail on the head pretty straight on.

Sure, I paid attention in my history classes throughout K-12 and higher education but I was never given unadulterated information like this book gave me. I had a lot of “huh...” moments, of both the “wow, I never knew that or would have thought about that” and the “I'm under qualified to read this book” varieties. I'm definitely going to have to read this again so I can fully absorb everything since this was information dense (obviously, but again, I knew going into this that there would be a lot of information being given to me and that some stuff wouldn't stick initially). But I never truly realized how deeply business and politics were entrenched in the other and to what lengths people have gone to in order to get their people elected and their policies enacted. This was a truly eye opening book and I will be picking up some of the books mentioned within this one to further my self-imposed education.

Thank you again to NG, Simon & Schuster, and Brody and Luke Mullins for the opportunity to read this book in advance.