Reviewed by Mitchell Szczepanczyk

If your staple news diet consists of U.S. mainstream newspapers, you're likely to get a perspective of the world that lends to believing certain things. For instance, you would believe the state of Florida did not illegally removed 57,700 voters from Florida voter rolls before the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election. You would agree that the International Monetary Fund did not mandate higher fuel prices in Ecuador in March 2001 and that the IMF had nothing to do with the subsequent riots by poor Ecuadorans. You would accept that 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill was indeed a freak accident and not the predictable consequence of money-saving efforts like a turned-off radar and faked safety reports.

If you believe any of these lies, Greg Palast would like a word with you. Palast, investigate journalist extraordinnaire, writes for the London Observer newspaper and appears on the BBC show Newsnight. Lest you think that Palast is just some America-bashing Brit, you are wrong: Palast is American. He was born near Los Angeles and studied economics at the University of Chicago. But he is sworn to use his powers for the forces of good. That he works in Britain doing his investigative work says something about the stenography that passes for journalism in this country.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is Palast's first book, published by Pluto Press. It details his journalistic and public affairs work over the years, written with courage and insight almost extinct in U.S. media.

Palast connects the Florida state government to a company called DBT Online which purged "felons" from its databases, people whose only crime was being African-American, Hispanic or white Democrats. He also details the fiasco in Ecuador as only one of a number of IMF chokeholds worldwide. And exposing the Valdez coverup is just part of Palast's work with Alaska's Chugach people, whose sad tale desperately needs telling.

Palast also sinks his teeth into a scandal involving Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1998. Hillary's law partners had received shady payments from Indonesian elites and a former client. The Republicans gave up pursuing the scandal to prevent Democrats from exposing a bigger Republican scandal involving theft from a right-wing front group.

Palast chronicles his adventure with a cash-for-access scandal in Britain's Parliament, which led to Tony Blair decrying Palast by name on the Parliament floor.

These are just some of the tales of corporate malfeasance and subversions of government that fill the book. Palast's witty, entertaining style makes for fun reading. He tells it like it is, profanity included. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is one of the best books money can buy.