Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
by Jane Mayer
View on GoodreadsJane Mayer's foundational 2016 investigation of the donor network — Koch brothers, Scaife family, Olin, Bradley, DeVos, and others — that built the modern American conservative movement's intellectual and political infrastructure across four decades.
Core ideas
- The donor network operates as a parallel state — funding universities, think tanks, legal organizations, ballot initiatives, political candidates, and judicial confirmations with strategic coordination most political parties can't match.
- The Koch Seminars — twice-yearly gatherings of donors committing to coordinated giving against specific policy goals — are the book's central operational reveal; the scale and strategic coherence were not public before Mayer documented them.
- The "academic-funding-to-policy-outcome" pipeline is documented in detail — how a specific donation to a university chair produces a specific research paper that's then cited in a specific Supreme Court brief or congressional hearing.
Published2016
Pages464
ISBN9780307947901
ReadApr 2025
