Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

In time, the Olin Foundation’s success in minting right-leaning thinkers drew the envy of the Left. “On the right, they understood that books matter,” says Steve Wasserman, now the editor at large at Yale University Press, who formerly tried but failed to get wealthy liberal donors to match the intellectual investments being made by conservatives. “I remember meeting at a restaurant in California with some of the major Democratic operatives and funders, Margery Tabankin, Stanley Sheinbaum and Danny Goldberg. I was telling them that they needed to figure out a way to fund books on the left. But books aren’t sexy. They weren’t interested. They didn’t think that in the political culture it mattered. The Democrats were hostage to star personalities and electoral politics.”