The Song Behind Today’s Review Title
ABBA, the Swedish supergroup that stormed music charts around the world in the 1970s, had their first hit song with Waterloo, which won the 50th anniversary Eurovision Challenge in 1974. From there the group went on to be the biggest selling musical act of all time. ABBA Gold, a compilation album of their greatest hits was released ten years after the group broke up and has been certified platinum over 128 times. Momma Mia!, the Broadway play featuring some of their songs toured globally and became one of the ten longest running musicals in Broadway history.
ABBA’s song Money, Money, Money features today’s review title. It was NOT one of their biggest hits in the US, reaching only #56 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. But it did hit #1 in several other countries, including Australia, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
Today’s book explores the ongoing take over of the US government by a set of billionaires, using and benefiting from the influence of foreign money. It is a scandal of enormous proportions demonstrating that, at least right now, it is indeed a rich man’s world.
You can listen to the song on the group’s official music video here on YouTube.
oligarchy noun
ol·i·gar·chy
1: government by the few, as in a choice between democracy and oligarchy
2: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes
also: a group exercising such control, i.e. the country's ruling oligarchy
The definition of “oligarchy” is, as you can see above, about the concentration of power in the hands of a few. But oligarchy is not, as Aristotle pointed out (and author Casey Michel highlights), the rule of just any small group, but the rule of the wealthiest few. Oligarchies arise from corruption and inequality within societies. When wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few men (and its almost always men), those few will do whatever they can to protect and grow that wealth, including corrupting and controlling the power of whichever society they are in.
Author Casey Michel lays out the case for the idea that the United States is now effectively an oligarchy. The circumstances he outlines that enabled this, the specific events and incidents he documents that moved it along, and the names he names of the wealthiest few who today are acting as an oligarchy are taken right out of the news cycle of the last 10 to 15 years. Individually, they will be familiar to most of us. But when you see them brought together as Michel does in this book you cannot escape the inevitable conclusion that oligarchy is not just a threat to the future of our American democracy, but it is already here.
Casey Michel is the Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, as well as a writer, analyst, and investigative journalist working on topics ranging from kleptocracy, oligarchy, illicit finance, and dark money to foreign lobbying and foreign interference. (Photo source: https://hrf.org/latest/hrfs-casey-michel-sanctioned-by-russian-regime/)
What has been hiding in plain sight, and what Michel’s book helps to bring out of the shadows, is the prevalence of foreign money and foreign influence that has helped bring us to this point. Our government, Michel says, no longer belongs to we the people. It has been bought by the wealthiest across the globe and bent to benefit them in ways most of us haven’t recognized.
United States of Oligarchy is a well-researched and well-documented book. Besides documenting the current state of affairs, Michel also does an excellent job of laying out the progression of oligarchy and wealth concentration in the United States, making the case that we’ve seen oligarchy here twice before.
The first time was the concentration of power resulting from the practice of slavery that led wealthy slaveholding landowners to take power to themselves in breaking from the US and forming the Confederate States of America, leading to the American Civil War.
The second was the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, the time of the original “robber barons” whose end is largely due to reforms brought about by President Teddy Roosevelt. Reforms which it took almost 100 years to wear down and return us to the state of oligarchy we are in today.
In neither of those prior periods though has American democracy been threatened by takeover from foreign money flowing in from oligarchs around the world.
This is an important book, and it underlines the sentiment that seems to be prevalent in this midterm election season — that this election is not a right - left contest, but a contest between the 1% (i.e. the oligarchs) and the rest of us. I really think everyone should read this book.
RATING: Four and a Half Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐🌠
OVERALL COMMENTS: An important and timely book that every American should read. Oligarchy is not just a threat to the future of our American democracy, it is already here.
I GOT MY COPY: I received an advanced reviewer’s copy of the book through NetGalley, and courtesy of the publisher St. Martin’s Press. The book is available to the public starting today, August 4, 2026.
Title: United States of Oligarchy: How America’s Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy
Author: Casey Michel
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers
Publish Date: August 4, 2026
ISBN-13: 9781250430113
Publisher’s List Price: $31.00 hard cover, $15.99 ebook, and $26. 99 audiobook.
Other Books and Stuff
CURRENT BOOKS & STUFF
Still not quite done with The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, the the fifth short book for a future newsletter post focused on reviews of short books.
In fact, we’ve not done much in the way of TV or movie viewing either, as we’ve spent most of the last week getting ready for and setting out on a two-month long trip. We left Wednesday and arrived Friday (local time) in Australia. We’re here for a visit with family, and to celebrate the wedding of one of our nephews.
WHAT’S NEXT
Next week I’ll be reviewing A is for Amoeba by Nicholas P. Money. This book by a fungal biologist explains its science in a conversational tone. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Many of us are introduced to the amoeba in science class at school but know very little about the amazing life of this versatile, shape-shifting cell. A Is for Amoeba is packed with surprising stories that give readers a richer appreciation of these astonishing microbes, revealing what amoebas have to tell us about the natural world and ourselves. Along the way, this entertaining and informative book shows how amoebas influenced figures like Friedrich Nietzsche, who saw in them an expression of the will to power, and Sigmund Freud, who likened the movements of amoebas to the human ego.
Nicholas Money describes how amoebas are athletic predators with the rudiments of consciousness and how their sophisticated responses to injury help to explain the origins of pain and suffering in animals. Amoebas have the biggest genomes of any organisms, embodying monumental chronicles of their evolution and survival, and by splitting in half and making copies of themselves, they have mastered a form of genderless immortality. Money explains how white blood cells and metastatic cancer cells in the human body behave like amoebas, curing and causing a range of illnesses, and discusses how research using artificial amoebas has profound implications for AI, robotics, and bioengineering. He also looks at the outsized role of amoebas in pop culture, from movies like The Blob to the cartoons of Gary Larson.
A delightful portrait of an iconic microbe, A Is for Amoeba reveals why, from its graceful movements to its astounding problem-solving skills, the amoeba is the perfect guide to the business of being alive on Earth.
