Gangsters of Capitalism Audiobook By Jonathan M. Katz cover art

Gangsters of Capitalism

Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Gangsters of Capitalism

By: Jonathan M. Katz
Narrated by: Adam Barr
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.74

Buy for $24.74

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

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 Audio
Military & War Politics & Government United States Military War Imperialism Self-Determination Cuba Colonial Period Caribbean Interwar Period

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