Gangsters of Capitalism
Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire
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Narrated by:
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Adam Barr
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By:
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Jonathan M. Katz
About this listen
A groundbreaking journey tracing America’s forgotten path to global power - and how its legacies shape our world today - told through the extraordinary life of a complicated Marine.
Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Best-selling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, “The Fighting Quaker” went - serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. From his first days as a 16-year-old recruit at the newly seized Guantánamo Bay, he blazed a path for empire: helping annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, leading troops in China (twice), and helping invade and occupy Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Mexico, and more. Yet in retirement, Butler turned into a warrior against war, imperialism, and big business, declaring: “I was a racketeer for capitalism."
Award-winning author Jonathan Myerson Katz traveled across the world - from China to Guantánamo, the mountains of Haiti to the Panama Canal - and pored over the personal letters of Butler, his fellow Marines, and his Quaker family on Philadelphia's Main Line. Along the way, Katz shows how the consequences of the Marines' actions are still very much alive: talking politics with a Sandinista commander in Nicaragua, getting a martial arts lesson from a devotee of the Boxer Rebellion in China, and getting cast as a POW extra in a Filipino movie about their American War. Tracing a path from the first wave of US overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy in our own time, Gangsters of Capitalism tells an urgent story about a formative era most Americans have never learned about, but that the rest of the world cannot forget.
©2022 Jonathan M. Katz (P)2022 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Lively, deeply researched ... Katz’s engaging style brings history alive."—Associated Press
"Like Butler himself, Katz’s book is singular and hard to pin down ... an exhilarating hybrid of studious history and adventuresome travelogue."—Jacobin
"Katz’s realism may shock many readers, but they would be well served to join him in pulling back the curtain, tipping over the jugs of institutional Kool-Aid, and taking a long, cold hard look in the proverbial mirror. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, this is a raw historical perspective that will both fascinate and unsettle."—Task and Purpose
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- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Kagame grew up as a wretched refugee. He and a group of comrades, determined to force their way back home after a generation of exile, designed one of the most audacious covert operations in the history of clandestine war. Then, after taking power, they amazed the world by stabilizing and reviving their devastated country.
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Best Most Comprehensive Work on Rwanda
- By Greg on 07-30-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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A Continent for the Taking
- The Tragedy and Hope of Africa
- By: Howard W. French
- Narrated by: Mirron E. Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Continent for the Taking, Howard W. French, a veteran correspondent for The New York Times, gives a compelling firsthand account of some of Africa's most devastating recent history. While he captures the tragedies that have repeatedly befallen Africa's peoples, French also opens our eyes to the immense possibility that lies in Africa's complexity, diversity, and myriad cultural strengths.
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A story to pay your attention to
- By George on 04-30-13
By: Howard W. French
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The Vietnam War
- An Intimate History
- By: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Ken Burns, Brian Corrigan
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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More than 40 years after it ended, the Vietnam War continues to haunt our country. We still argue over why we were there, whether we could have won, and who was right and wrong in their response to the conflict. When the war divided the country, it created deep political fault lines that continue to divide us today. Now, continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed collaborations, the authors draw on dozens and dozens of interviews in America and Vietnam to give us the perspectives of people involved at all levels of the war.
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The usual Vietnam info delivered in the old prose
- By Kevin Warren on 10-26-17
By: Geoffrey C. Ward, and others
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Red Heat
- Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean
- By: Alex von Tunzelmann
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Caribbean crises of the Cold War are revealed as never before in this riveting story of clashing ideologies, the rise of the politics of fear, the machinations of superpowers, and the daring of the brazen mavericks who took them on. The superpowers thought they could use Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as puppets, but what neither bargained on was that their puppets would come to life.
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Interesting, not extraordinary.
- By History on 10-24-11
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The President and the Assassin
- McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century
- By: Scott Miller
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassin's bullet shattered the nation's confidence. The shocking murder of President William McKinley threw into stark relief the emerging new world order of what would come to be known as the American Century.
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An Ideal History Book for the Audio Format
- By Nelson Alexander on 09-30-11
By: Scott Miller
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The Burning Shores
- Inside the Battle for the New Libya
- By: Frederic Wehrey
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from 42 years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong.
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amazing yet painful book
- By Ghassan Tranesh on 09-20-18
By: Frederic Wehrey
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Midnight's Furies
- The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition
- By: Nisid Hajari
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
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Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody - it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's protégé and the political leader of India, believed that Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand.
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Amazingly detailed account of this tragedy i gigan
- By BG on 10-09-15
By: Nisid Hajari
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To America
- Personal Reflections of an Historian
- By: Stephen E. Ambrose
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Reflecting on his career, Stephen E. Ambrose - one of the country's most influential historians - confronts America's failures and struggles as he explores both its moral and pragmatic triumphs. To America celebrates the men and women who invented the United States and made it exceptional. Taking a few swings at today's political correctness, Ambrose grapples with the country's historic sins of racism, its neglect and ill treatment of Native Americans, and its tragic errors.
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Wow!
- By Coach Nathan L. on 02-10-16
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Bitter Freedom
- Ireland in a Revolutionary World
- By: Maurice Walsh
- Narrated by: Michael Healy
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The Irish Revolution has long been mythologized in American culture but seldom understood. For too long the story of Irish independence and its aftermath has been told only within an Anglo-Irish context. Now, in the critically acclaimed Bitter Freedom, journalist Maurice Walsh, with "a novelist's eye for the illuminating detail of everyday lives in extremis" ( Prospect), places revolutionary Ireland in the panorama of the global disorder born of the terrible slaughter of World War I and provides a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human face of the conflict.
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Helpful for Irish Americans
- By Matthew Tozer on 04-12-17
By: Maurice Walsh
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Mao
- The Unknown Story
- By: Jung Chang, Jon Halliday
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 29 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on a decade of research and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before, and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this is the most authoritative biography of Mao ever written.
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Fills many gaps! Very good..but!
- By Jene on 08-07-06
By: Jung Chang, and others
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When the Irish Invaded Canada
- The Incredible True Story of the Civil War Veterans Who Fought for Ireland's Freedom
- By: Christopher Klein
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Irish Invaded Canada is the untold tale of a band of fiercely patriotic Irish Americans and their chapter in Ireland's centuries-long fight for independence. Inspiring, lively, and often undeniably comic, this is a story of fighting for what's right in the face of impossible odds.
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Great book!
- By Lori Brogan on 08-26-24
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Fractured Lands
- How the Arab World Came Apart
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Scott Anderson
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2011 a series of antigovernment uprisings shook the Middle East and North Africa in what would become known as the Arab Spring. Few could predict that these convulsions, initially hailed in the West as a triumph of democracy, would give way to brutal civil war, the terrors of the Islamic State, and a global refugee crisis. But, as New York Times best-selling author Scott Anderson shows, the seeds of catastrophe had been sown long before. In this gripping account, Anderson examines the myriad complex causes of the region's profound unraveling.
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Timely and a must to listen to!
- By becky robbins on 05-05-17
By: Scott Anderson
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How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat - until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country.
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Timely and important
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This story angered and cheered inside me
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Timely and important
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The Big Truck That Went By
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We are familiar with maps that outline all 50 states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire", exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories - the islands, atolls, and archipelagos - this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, author Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light.
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What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the 21st century: Turkey and Iran.
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challenges stereotypes
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"Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals.
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Looking at the dark side
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As history, the uprisings of 1848 have long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848 nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to significant changes that continue to shape our world today. These battles for the future were fought with one eye kept squarely on the past. Revolutionary Spring is a new understanding of 1848 that offers chilling parallels to our present moment.
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Like the revolutions, it got off to a good start
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Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson.
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A timely review of the threat to the nation of a President who is unlistening to the “better angels of our nature.”
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In 1965, the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the 20th century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful.
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Great book, but the narration has serious flaws
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In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the Transcontinental Railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. Once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, America's railways soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and visionaries. The vicious competition between empire builders such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and E. H. Harriman sparked stock market frenzies, panics, and crashes; provoked strikes; transformed the nation's geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle....
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Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.
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In a cloak-and-dagger story of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents, Kinzer reveals the involvement of Eisenhower, Churchill, Kermit Roosevelt, and the CIA in Operation Ajax, which restored Mohammad Reza Shah to power. Reza imposed a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection.
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Hard to please
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Brothers
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For decades, books about John or Robert Kennedy have woven either a shimmering tale of Camelot gallantry or a tawdry story of runaway ambition and reckless personal behavior. But the real story of the Kennedys in the 1960s has long been submerged - until now. In Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, David Talbot sheds a dramatic new light on the tumultuous inner life of the Kennedy presidency and its stunning aftermath. Talbot has written a gripping political history.
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Just another conspiracy book
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Secondhand Time
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When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre", describing her work as "a history of emotions - a history of the soul". Alexievich's distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation.
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The Heart, Soul & Iron Fist Of Russia
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The Shock Doctrine
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In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution.
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If It's Bad for Humanity, It's Good for Business
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What listeners say about Gangsters of Capitalism
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John Cashman
- 04-26-22
Excellent book
This is an excellent and timely book on a long neglected subject. Very highly recommended.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-18-22
Brilliant
Great book, wonderfully alternating between Butler's career and vignettes telling us about the places his actions affected.
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- BYbarra
- 04-11-23
Remarkable and Revealing
General Smedley Butler, have you heard of him? His story is one of a loyal marine who moved up through the ranks and fought where he was sent in the years before and after WWI. Decorated with two Medal of Honors.
But as he serves the more he sustained how the US military was not used to defend the United States but for political-business reasons. For invading, coercing and manipulating other weaker nations.
He loved his country and democracy and believed his mission was to protect both, but instead he was used for the interest of American big business.
The author traveled to all the places the general fought and relates the situations to later times of US history to even the present.
It is a worthy and valuable biography to read. If you dare leave your political and world history closet.
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- J. Ford
- 06-10-23
Skewed left some
A great story and great research including going to the locations. The author tried to tell multiple sides of a story but still missed a few and made it seem a little more conspiracy than reality.
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- A. S. Read
- 06-30-23
So much to absorb
Loved it. Should be required reading for hx buffs. Reader was great too. Lots to absorb.
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- Lizzie Ketzenberger
- 04-18-24
How we got here
Great book about the history we aren’t told in school. An enlightening look at how we got here. Well told narrative history and nicely tied into our current times.
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- Benjamin
- 01-28-22
historical tour of the crimes of American Empire
thoughtful investigation of the life of Smedley Butler in both historical context and through the lense of the author traveling to major sites of Butler's life. ties the strands of the present back to some of the historic turning points for the early American Empire. documents many of the atrocities that Butler took part in or orchestrated for the benefit of gangster capitalism.
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7 people found this helpful
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- no
- 04-25-22
a man's journey to self-realization and awareness.
Smedley Butler, a racist and bigoted man, who spent his life in forcing the will of capitalist imperialist upon the Lesser nations of the world. He was changed by his brutal experiences to question the ruthless imperialism of his government and Military fellows.
an eye-opening revelation of America's past imperialism and its effect on today's fragile democracy.
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- J Robinson
- 03-27-22
Exceptional read
Great examination of America’s Imperial past and its impact on the present. Fascinating look at America’s occupation of Haiti and its effects.
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- Brandon Hellbusch
- 05-15-22
A good round perspective of Smedley Butler
Being a person who is generally anti-war and very skeptical of the state department. I learned a great deal more about what the United States did during the early 1900's. The overall narrative in most US history classes jumps from the Civil War, a slight bit on the Spanish War, then straight through to WW1. Butler was in pivotal areas and conflicts I was unaware of before listening to this audio book.This was educational and raw veiw of Butler and his legacy, the bad and the good.
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