Stealing from America: A history of corruption from Jamestown to Reagan - Hardcover

In this revised edition of The Founding Finaglers ( LJ 5/1/76), Miller tells the story of "larceny on the national level" from the land speculators and venal crown governors of the early colonial period through Teapot Dome to the open criminality of Watergate and the legal and illegal manipulations of the S&L scandal and Iran-Contra dealings. The majority of the book discusses the pre-1900 period; two new chapters treat mainly the Nixon and Reagan presidencies. Several recent books have dealt with American corruption. Shelley Ross's Falling from Grace: Sex, Scandal, and Corruption in American Politics from 1702 to the Present (Ballantine, 1988) concentrates on sex; Daniel Friedenberg's Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Land ( LJ 6/1/92) emphasizes land speculation; and George Kohn's Encyclopedia of American Scandals ( LJ 4/15/89) is inclusive if brief on specific subjects. The 20th anniversary of Watergate and the upcoming election may whet people's appetites for the retelling of political scandals. If so, Miller's book, based mainly on secondary sources, offers a great many tales albeit dryly.
- Deborah Hammer, Queens Borough P.L., New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Miller (Spying for America, 1989, etc.) updates The Founding Finaglers (1976), his sharp-tongued, lively chronicle of the history of US governmental corruption from the nation's early days of embezzlement-happy colonial governors through the Teapot Dome Scandal of the Harding Administration. The new material covers the subsequent years, through 1988; only FDR's Administration keeps Miller's scandal-meter from clicking wildly, which he attributes to FDR having ``held office at a time when the nation was undergoing one of its periodic reform binges.'' Though he finds fault with all subsequent administrations (stating, for instance, that LBJ's "snake-oil salesman's manner made many American automatically pat their wallets for reassurance''), Miller saves his special wrath for Ronald Reagan: ``Under Reagan's somnolent eye, as many as 225 of his appointees faced allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing....Reagan's reaction [to Irangate] was similar to that of the piano player in the house of prostitution who maintained he didn't know what was going on upstairs.'' Perfectly nasty reading, then, for election-year cynics. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.