"A vital book about the ridiculously cozy relationship between corporate wealth and government power and how it only seems to be getting worse" (William Cohan, author of Money and Power).

In the United States today we have good reasons to be afraid. Our Bill of Rights has been rendered powerless by ubiquitous surveillance and our freedoms are impaired by government control of information, systemic financial corruption, and unfettered corporate influence in our elections. Behind a thinning veneer of democracy, the Corporate Security State is tipping the balance between the self-interest of a governing corporate elite and the rights of the people to freedom, safety, and fairness.

In The Rise of the American Corporate Security State, Beatrice Edwards examines the real reasons to be afraid in twenty-first-century America, and outlines how we can address them. Our first steps in the right direction may be small, but they are important. They are based on the principle that we have a right to know what our government is doing and to speak openly about it. Creeping censorship, secret courts, and clandestine corporate control are all anathema to democratic practices and must be corrected now—before this last chance to redeem our rights is lost.