Now available in paperback, this timely book challenges the cult of the free market that has dominated all political and economic discussion since the Reagan revolution.

Even many liberals have felt the need to genuflect before the altar of free markets, but in The Predator State, progressive economist James K. Galbraith suggests that, under the Bush administration, conservatives have clearly abandoned the Reagan dogma and replaced it with crony capitalism. Tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and such schemes as privatizing Social Security would divert the national...