Brilliant, in an odd kind of way! The paradox of this book is that it often reads like an unbelievable and corny spy thriller, while simultaneously dealing with probably the most real and important issues facing humanity and the planet today. I am sure the author is well aware of this - a more academic, or more "credible" account would have reached far fewer people. Regardless of how much artistic license John Perkins may have used, the essence of this book has a sobering ring of truth about it.

Perkins takes us through his autobiographical account of life as an economic hit-man or EHM. "We are an elite group of men and women who utilize financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks." From 1971 to 1980, this found him working in developing countries (eg. Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Panama), subtley and not-so-subtley building the global American Empire. The real-life politics is interesting.

Perkins eventually quit his job, finally finding the greed and hypocrisy too difficult to deal with. This was partly a result of getting to know the natives of each country he worked in and his social life makes entertaining reading. Although he left the EHM job in 1980, it took the events of September 11th 2001 to finally inspire him to come completely clean and publish this book.

The epilogue is a nice little wake-up call in itself.