America is a country made possible by hucksterism and carnival buncombe. It is the birthplace of both modern PR and advertising, the first place on earth to apply techniques of commercial marketing to politics, and a country where, for at least thirty years, the economy has been driven by the engine of finance—that is, by the magical creation of wealth through financial securities and derivatives.

What was to be the model for a big questions sort of book, and how to write a book that would still be scholarly, but not academic?

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, p 262

In late 2011, around the time of Occupy Wall Street, he for some reason known only to himself, decided to go gunning for me despite my never having met him or interacted with him in my life. He started with outright personal slander that had nothing to do with my work (or anything else I could figure out) until my publishers encouraged me to point out that false personal aspersions were actionable