The Shadow World

Inside the Global Arms Trade

By: Andrew Feinstein

Narrated by: Gildart Jackson

Length: 25 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

The downloadable audiobook edition of Andrew Feinstein's powerful exposé, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, complete and unabridged and read by the actor Gildart Jackson. Pulling back the curtain on the secretive world of the global arms trade, Andrew Feinstein reveals the corruption and the cover-ups behind weapons deals ranging from the largest in history - between the British and Saudi governments - to BAE's controversial transactions in South Africa, Tanzania and eastern Europe, and the revolving-door relationships that characterise the US Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex. He exposes in forensic detail both the formal government-to-government trade in arms and the shadow world of illicit weapons dealing - and lays bare the shocking and inextricable links between the two. The Shadow World places us in the midst of the arms trade's dramatic wheeling and dealing, ranging from corporate boardrooms to seedy out-of-the-way hotels via far-flung offshore havens, and reveals the profound danger this network represents to all of us.

©2011 Andrew Feinstein (P)2011 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Andrew Feinstein has written an authoritative guide to the business of war. Chilling, heartbreaking and enraging." (Arundhati Roy)

"Essential for anyone who cares about justice, transparency and accountability in both the public and private spheres, and for anyone who believes that it is more important to invest in saving lives than in the machinery of death." (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)

"A devastating and scrupulously documented account of the greed, venality, and rampant corruption pervading the global arms trade." (Andrew J. Bacevich, retired colonel, US Army, and author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War)

excellent

The book in very informative and horrifying. The narration allows to follow the huge amount of information relatively easily.

The Arms Industry Revealed

Quite revealing expose of the disgraceful world where world powers make profits and poor people are massacred.No world power can hold up its head,they are all shameful.An excellent book,well read and presented.

Where your tax money goes...

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Nobody needs to read this book to know the military industrial complex's of the US, UK, China, Russia, and Israel are out of control. What this book does is cronicle the outrages, and there are many by many. Obviously a tremendous amount of research has been done here. The author covers all the major players in the weapons game, and many of the smaller ones. Anyone who wonders why the US spends almost %5 GNP on the military, or how cost overuns work in the manufacturers favor, or what the real effect military programs have on job creation, needs to listen to this book. The level of legal bribery of US politicians by the military industrial complex is very depressing. The author digs the dirt on pretty much every country that buys and sells munitions...and its a really dirty business. An almost overwhelming (the corruption is for sure) amount of information, from coldwar manipulations of the soviet threat for the purposes of promoting weapon systems (a sales strategy that is used to present day) , to Iran-Contra, to the current Obama administration. Everything you wanted to know about the global arms trade but were afraid to ask....be very afaid.

What did you like best about this story?

It names names, dates, and places.