ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Steve Piersanti, my editor and publisher of Berrett-Koehler, who has made this book possible. Steve gave me unflagging support for this work and many keen insights into how to make it better. The whole staff of Berrett-Koehler is an author's dream, working collaboratively with me to get this book out to the largest audience possible.
Berrett-Koehler's thematic series, called Currents, has provided a perfect context in which to publish my writing about politics and social change. This book is a sequel to my earlier Berrett-Koehler book, Regime Change Begins at Home. I have reintroduced some basic concepts and passages from Chapters 1, 3, and 10of Regime Change, so that new readers can jump right in. But it will be a new and provocative read to those who have read Regime Change or my earlier books, since I turn my attention to a cluster of new concerns: the role of elections and democratic rhetoric in hiding the very existence of regimes, the cultural and religious strategies that the regime uses to legitimate itself, the nightmarish prospects for an extreme right-wing turn, and a new, in-depth look at the social movements that could take the country in a more progressive direction.
I want to thank Ted Nace, whose authoritative work on the history of corporate power helped educate me. Ted reviewed the whole manuscript with exceptional care and gave me many important insights about how to improve it. I also want to thank Yale Magrass, an old friend and learned scholar of U.S. history and political economy, for reading the chapters and offering a wealth of observations that helped give the book more depth. And I thank Joseph Webb, who also reviewed the entire book and offered valuable substantive and stylistic comments.
As always, my friends David Karp and John Williamson helped get me through the intensity of this new project. They listened with their customary patience, read and commented on chapters, and gave me the encouragement that kept me at it.
Finally, I want to thank Elena Kolesnikova, who inspired and warmed me on every step of the journey. Elena's own talents as a thinker, writer, and editor grace these chapters. Elena has been endlessly patient, always willing to hear me rehearse the latest argument. I am always grateful for her loving patience, for food, films and fun, and for awakening my heart.
