When an EF-5 tornado destroyed one-third of Joplin, Missouri, and killed 161 people on May 22, 2011, the eyes of the nation were focused on the small city of 50,000. Its leaders, including men such as City Manager Mark Rohr and Superintendent of Schools C. J. Huff, received nationwide attention as they sought to return normalcy to a town that had suffered the worst tornado in the United States in six decades. Behind the scenes, however, the story was entirely different, as Rohr and Huff worked with a group of well-connected business interests to hijack the recovery effort and turn it into a...