Gangs of America : The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy

Where did this powerful institution come from? How did it get so much power? In Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy, author Ted Nace probes the roots of corporate power, finding answers in surprising places.

A key revelation of the book is the wariness of the Founding Fathers toward corporations. That wariness was shaped by rampant abuses on the part of British corporations such as the Virginia Company, whose ill-treatment killed thousands of women and children on forced-labor tobacco plantations, and the East India Company, whose attempt to monopolize American commodities led to the merchant-led rebellion known as the Boston Tea Party.
Ted Nace worked as a researcher on electric utility policy for the Environmental Defense Fund and as staff director of the Dakota Resource Council, a grassroots group seeking to protect farms and ranches from strip mines and other energy projects. In 1985, he founded Peachpit Press, the world’s leading publisher of books on computer graphics and desktop publishing. After selling Peachpit Press to British publishing conglomerate Pearson, Nace felt driven to understand the historical roots of corporate political power. Gangs of America, the result of that quest, features Nace’s engaging, personal, and complex voicethat of a writer, a businessman, and an activist.