Praise for The Chickenshit Club

Winner of the 2018 Excellence in Financial Journalism Award

“Brave and elegant . . . A fearless reporter . . . Eisinger’s important and profound book takes no prisoners.” —The Washington Post

“An absorbing financial history, a monumental work of journalism . . . A first-rate study of the federal bureaucracy. It’s also an expansive parable: of righteousness and compromise, overreach and underreach, excess, deceit, greed—the whole American show.” —Bloomberg Businessweek

“That the Wall Street titans who blew up the financial system suffered little more than slight reductions in their bonuses only reinforced the perception that the ‘system’ is ‘rigged’—with the consequences we know only too well. Many people simply want to live in a world that is fair. As Eisinger shows, this one isn’t.” —James Kwak, The New York Times Book Review

“The book is as alarming as it is comprehensive, but it’s also gripping. The unfolding of the financial crisis makes for thrilling drama in Eisinger’s hands, heightened by the anxiety still felt by all who survived it. He’s even able to make white-collar courtroom proceedings and investigations into tax shelters sparkle. . . . This book is a wakeup call, delivered calmly yet with no shortage of well-reasoned urgency, to a nation whose democratic traditions are being undermined by backroom dealing, deregulation, and the consolidation of corporate power. It’s a chilling read, and a needed one.” —NPR

“Smart, deeply sourced, and full of insider tidbits about legal stars like Comey, judge Jed Rakoff, and former SEC chair Mary Jo White.” —Fortune

“A well-reported tale.” —The Financial Times

“Jesse Eisinger is a master journalist. Revelatory, maddening, and engrossing, the book draws on vivid characters and immersive narratives to chart the rise of the corruption and the inertia within the Justice Department.” —Bryan Burrough, co-author of Barbarians at the Gate and author of Days of Rage

“Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Eisinger does a masterful job of assembling this riveting dossier of the legal scholars, jurists, and elected officials who played a role in turning the U.S. into a nation in which white-collar criminals are celebrated for their cunning instead of incarcerated for their offenses.” —Booklist (starred review)

“The Chickenshit Club is a fast moving, fly on the wall, disheartening look at the deterioration of the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, written sympathetically, thoroughly, but mostly—engagingly. It is a book of superheroes.” —The San Francisco Review of Books