The Family

This is a must read. In the same way that Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine mapped out a process that has been going on in plain sight for a long time, Jeff Sharlet shows us a process that has been going on stealthily for many, many years. As The Shock Doctrine sheds light on an appalling abuse of po......more

As Jeff Sharlet has been at pains to stress since The Family was published, the "Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" is not a conspiracy. Rather, it is secret because it is discrete, and because it has been overlooked by journalists and the secular writers of American history. Abra......more

3 for readability; 5+ for relevance. The Family is known to most Beltway politicos and in the corridors of political powerhouses throughout the world. Known well, but little understood. This is an areligious, ultra-conservative, tightly-knit network of American political and economic power that oper......more

Sharlet’s prose captures people’s nuances of religious feeling, wording, and style, and he does it with dispassionately descriptive art. He compiles an enormous amount of research, investigating a vast, semi-secretive religious movement that has grown over the course of almost a century. He explores......more

This book was read in March-April 2013. It is a fascinating book, chockfull of grand conspiracy theories that sound almost ridiculous, unless one watches the news or reads up on what is actually happening in the world. Jeff Sharlet is a better man than me. As testament to either his objectivity as a......more