By Andrea Bernstein

An absorbing, novelistic, and powerfully affecting work of history and investigative journalism that tracks the unraveling of American democracy. 

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Anyone concerned about American democracy should read Bernstein’s devastating exposé of the Trump and Kushner families.”

—Jane Mayer, New York Times best-selling author of Dark Money


 

In American Oligarchs, award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein tells the story of the Trump and Kushner families like never before. Building on her landmark reporting for the acclaimed podcast Trump, Inc. and The New Yorker, Bernstein brings to light new information about the families’ arrival as immigrants to America, their paths to success, and the business and personal lives of the president and his closest family members. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and more than one hundred thousand pages of documents, American Oligarchs details how the Trump and Kushner dynasties encouraged and profited from a system of corruption, dark money, and influence trading, and reveals the historical turning points and decisions―on taxation, regulation, white-collar crime, and campaign finance laws―that have brought us to where we are today. A new afterword examines how the two families’ transactional politics left America particularly vulnerable to the crises of 2020.

Additional Praise

“A sweeping story of two American families, which shows that both the Trumps and the Kushners made their fortunes—often with government money. How did these ‘self-made men’ really get made? With donations, favors, intimidation and other people’s money. Nobody really beats city hall. The winners buy it, as Bernstein shows.”

—David Fahrenthold,

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist at the Washington Post

“Riveting! Andrea Bernstein deftly tracks the history of the Trump and Kushner families from their roots through their immigration to the United States and their progression up through the socioeconomic ranks.  American Oligarchs is comprehensive, brilliantly written, filled with detail and suspense—it reads like a financial thriller.”

—A. M. Homes,

prize–winning author of Days of Awe and This Book Will Save Your Life

“Andrea Bernstein masterfully chronicles the sordid narrative that is the American reality. What elevates her book isn’t just her gobsmacking tale of these two families; it’s that she illuminates the contours of the system that brought us their corrupt reign.”

—Franklin Foer,

staff writer at the Atlantic and author of World Without Mind


Andrea Bernstein

Andrea Bernstein

Andrea Bernstein is the Peabody Award–winning cohost of the acclaimed WNYC/ProPublica podcast Trump, Inc., which won the prestigious 2019 Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University award. In addition to broadcast appearances on outlets including PBS NewsHour, CNN, and Fresh Air, her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York, and on NPR.

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