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Smedley Butler …
was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Bestselling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, the "Fighting Quaker” went―in nearly every major overseas conflict from 1898 until the eve of World War II. From his days as a teenage recruit at the newly seized Guantánamo Bay, he blazed a path for empire: helping annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, leading troops in China (twice), and invading and occupying Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico, and more. Yet in retirement, Butler turned into a warrior against war and big business. He said "war is a racket" and declared: “I was a racketeer for capitalism."
Jonathan Myerson Katz traveled the world recreating Butler’s journeys and pored over the personal letters of the Marine, his comrades, and his family on Philadelphia’s Main Line. In doing so, Katz reveals how memories of U.S. imperialism remain a vital force shaping politics and culture across the globe.
Tracing a path from the first wave of U.S. overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy today, Gangsters of Capitalism tells an urgent story about a formative era most Americans have never learned about, but that the rest of the world cannot forget.
Praise for Gangsters of Capitalism
"The book is far more extraordinary than even the life of Smedley Butler... a compelling and insightful meditation on the trauma people still feel as a result of Butler’s career and the American ambitions it represented."
— Eric Rauchway, The Washington Post
"A stunning book, part secret history and part globe-spanning journalism … Deeply reported and masterfully told, this book is indispensable reading from one of America’s most important foreign correspondents." —Christopher Leonard, New York Times bestselling author of Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America
"Lively, deeply researched ... Katz’s engaging style brings history alive."
—Associated Press
"Gangsters of Capitalism may well be the most intrepid biography you will ever read, and not only for the depth of its research, its masterful grasp of context and character, or its monumental reach across space and time. What truly sets this biography in a class by itself is Jonathan Katz's Olympian resolve to follow in his subject's literal footsteps, an odyssey that becomes a kind of atlas or meditative travel guide to the origins of America's bloody overseas empire. As much as anyone, General Smedley Butler personified the first four decades of the American imperium, and this excellent biography--as compelling and colorful as the man himself--goes far toward tallying the true costs of empire. For anyone seeking to understand how the modern world came to be, Gangsters of Capitalism is an essential book." — Ben Fountain, author of the National Book Award Finalist Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
“A sensational read”
—Mike Duncan, New York Times bestselling author and host of the Revolutions podcast
"A real page-turner."
—Noam Chomsky
"Like Butler himself, Katz’s book is singular and hard to pin down ... an exhilarating hybrid of studious history and adventuresome travelogue."
—Jacobin
"Immensely readable."
—The Federalist
“A taut, unnerving account of the Marine who carried the Stars and Stripes all over the globe. By following Butler’s bloody trail around the world, Katz thoughtfully reckons with empire’s true cost”
—Daniel Immerwahr, professor of history at Northwestern University and author of How to Hide An Empire
“It’s a fantastic book”
— Rachel Maddow
“Really remarkable … [Katz] takes it to the next level.” —Clint Smith, Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for How the Word Is Passed
"An incredible new biography of Smedley Butler ... [a] prism through which to view essentially the establishment of the American empire."
— Chris Hayes, All In With Chris Hayes
"Katz’s realism may shock many readers, but they would be well served to join him in pulling back the curtain, tipping over the jugs of institutional Kool-Aid, and taking a long, cold hard look in the proverbial mirror. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, this is a raw historical perspective that will both fascinate and unsettle."
—Task and Purpose
"Engaging ... Gangsters of Capitalism is not only a biography of Butler. The long-dead Marine also serves as Katz’s Virgil, leading him on a journey around the world and through the inferno of empire’s afterlife."
—The New Republic
“I can’t praise it enough. Compelling, readable and profound, it is an excellent history of the first decades of American imperialism as well as a story of how our actions abroad are destined to affect us here at home.”
— Jamelle Bouie, New York Times columnist
"A perfect marriage of author and subject...Blending first-person reportage and analysis with impressive historical detail, Katz uses Butler’s story to explore war and capitalism in the United States, and to assess the gap between our morals and the lives we actually live."
—Emily Tamkin, The New Statesman
"A superb book."
—Responsible Statecraft
"Stellar."
—Pod Save The People
"Searing...An eye-opening portrait of American hubris."
—Publisher's Weekly
"Surprising and very well-written... Smedley Butler emerges in Katz’s book as a kind of tragic villain. An idealistic boy grown into a monster, he served his country by ruining other countries beyond repair, and eventually seeing how much harm he had done. If the Americans today fret about migrants from Central America and Haiti, or the revived hostility of China, they can now see the origin of those threats."
—The Tyee
"In an unsettling era in which Americans have been forced to contemplate the possible demise of their global empire, the remarkable life story of Smedley Butler is a primer on how that empire was wrought out of a string of long-obscured 'small wars,' coups and interventions a mere century ago ... A clear-eyed, excitingly-told look at that history, and a bracing, necessary read for our times."
—Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: a Revolutionary Life
"An excellent, excellent book. Katz writes really beautifully about very ugly things. I couldn't recommend this book more highly."
—Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror
“A relevant, readable effort to link past American colonialism to the present impulse to install homegrown leaders for life.”
—Kirkus
"Katz is a wonderful writer and deep reporter who is perfectly poised to tell the story of American Empire." —Peter Bergen, New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt
"Butler was the Forrest Gump of US imperialism, in all the good and bad ways implied by that statement. As a Marine, Butler went everywhere and helped give birth to several bloody American traditions abroad: violence in the name of commerce, a can-do spirit willing to do horrible things, and a love of soldiers who risked their lives for their country. Traveling in Butler's footsteps, Jonathan Katz devastatingly documents the toll of US interference around the globe from the late nineteenth century well into our own." — Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps
