Description:

Two veteran investigative journalists trace the rise of the modern lobbying industry through the three dynasties—one Republican, two Democratic—that have enabled corporate interests to infiltrate American politics and undermine our democracy.
On K Street, a few blocks from the White House, you'll find the offices of the most powerful men in Washington. In the 1970s, the city's center of gravity began to shift away from elected officials in big marble buildings to a handful of savvy, handsomely paid operators who didn't answer to any fixed constituency.

The cigar-chomping son of a powerful Congressman, an illustrious political fixer with a weakness for modern art, a Watergate-era dirty trickster, the city's favorite cocktail party host...these were the sorts of men who now ran Washington. Over four decades, they'd chart new ways to turn their clients' cash into political leverage, abandoning favor-trading in smoke-filled rooms for increasingly...