"Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why ... have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against 'big government' led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement. But ... Jane Mayer [argues] in this ... history [that] a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views also played a key role by bankrolling a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system"--Dust jacket flap.