Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power

Slightly tangential to mainstream doomer fare but a very interesting history of how corporations became de facto government entities and basically took over running the show for the benefit of the few. Corporations go back much - much - further than many people realise.

The book can be downloaded free as a PDF which is always a bonus

CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION (sample chapters in HTML format)

one: How did Corporations get so much Power? In which the author reads a poll, feels provoked and befuddled, and organizes his investigation

two: From Street Fight to Empire The British roots of the American corporation (1267-1773)

three: The Ultimate Reality Show The brutal history of the Virginia Company (1607-1624)

four: Why the Colonists Feared Corporations… In which the citizens of Boston demonstrate the use of the hatchet as an anti-monopoly device (1607-1773)

five ...And What They Did About It How the framers of the American political system restrained corporate power (1787–1850)

six: The Genuis The man who reinvented the corporation (1850–1880)

seven: Super Powers The corporation acquires nine powerful attributes (1860-1900)

eight: The Judge Stephen Field and the politics of personhood (18681885)

nine: The Court Reporter Who really decided the Supreme Court’s most important corporate case?(1886)

ten: The Lavender-Vested Turkey Gobbler How a “majestic, super-eminent” lawyer deceived the Supreme Court (1883)

eleven: Survival of the Fittest How the Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment to advance a Social Darwinist agenda, and how “people power” toppled that agenda (1886–1937)

twelve: the Revolt of the Bosses The new mobilization of corporate political power (1971-2003)

thirteen: Speech=Money Using the First Amendment to block campaign finance reform

fourteen: Judicial Yoga The tangled logic of corporate rights

fifteen: Crime Wave The roots of the scandals of 2002

sixteen: Global Rule How international trade agreements are creating new corporate rights

seventeen: Fighting Back A movement emerges to challenge corporate hegemony

eighteen: Intelligent, Amoral, Evolving The hazards of persistent, dynamic entities