The New York Times bestselling author of Armed Madhouse offers a globetrotting, Sam Spade-style investigation that blows the lid off the oil industry, the banking industry, and the governmental agencies that aren't regulating either.

This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans the globe and decades.

For Vultures' Picnic, investigative journalist Greg Palast has spent his career uncovering the connection between the world of energy (read: oil) and finance. He's built a team that reads like a casting call for a Hollywood thriller-a Swiss multilingual investigator, a punk journalist, and a gonzo cameraman-to reveal how environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and, most interestingly, veiled connections between the financial industry and energy titans. Palast shows how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and Central Banks act as puppets for Big Oil.

With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, Vultures' Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can't write-and take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.

“Napoleoni has accomplished an extraordinary task of research in tracking, finding and graphically describing the financiers and the institutions supporting global terrorism, including al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.”—John K. Cooley, author of Unholy Wars

“A masterpiece . . . This book should be required reading for everyone in the White House, State Department and Pentagon.”—Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and The Joker’s Wild: Dubya’s Trick Deck

In Terror Incorporated, Loretta Napoleoni maps out the arteries of an international economic system that feeds armed groups the world over. Chasing terror money, she takes the reader from CIA headquarters to the smuggling routes of the far East, from the back rooms of Wall Street to hawala exchanges in the Middle East.

Napoleoni describes the “New Economy of Terror,” “a fast-growing international economic system with a turnover of about $1.5 trillion [that] is challenging Western hegemony.” It is made up of illegal businesses such as arms and narcotics trading and oil and diamond smuggling, as well as charitable donations and legal profits. Napoleoni reveals the interdependency between economies run by armed groups and Western economies. “As in the Crusades, religion is simply a recruitment tool; the real driving force is economics.”

A pioneering examination of the system and methods by which international terrorism is financed, Terror Incorporated is “penetrating, lucid and essential” (Harry Porter, author of Empire State).

Loretta Napoleoni, a former Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Rotary scholar at the London School of Economics, is an expert on international terrorism who has worked as an economist and foreign correspondent for Italy’s financial papers. She has translated and edited books on terrorism and was among the few people to interview the Red Brigades in Italy after three decades of silence.

Greg Palast, one of today’s most celebrated (and vilified) investigative journalists, creates 54 cards to identify the industry moguls, corrupt politicos, and crackpot ideologues who stole the 2000 presidential election. Not just another regime change playing cards knock-off, The Joker’s Wild is a card game for up to four players that actually lets you experience all the piety-spouting, grammar-butchering, flight-suit-donning thrills of being -Commander-in-Chief.

With full-color original art throughout, The Joker’s Wild features a sprawling cast of shady characters identified by Palast in award-winning investigative reports. In addition to the usual suspects, such as Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, the playing cards profile global cabals like the Carlysle Group and the WTO; sleazy wheeler-dealers, including Salim bin Laden and Adnan Kashoggi; masters of the media such as Rupert Murdoch and Clear Channel; and more.

But the cards are only half the fun of The Joker’s Wild. In addition, players get a poster-sized snakes-and-ladders-style playing board on which all twisted roads lead to the House of Cards (a.k.a., the White House). Both the cards and the game board graphics are keyed to an in-depth annotation explaining how each character profiled fits into the big picture.

With The Joker’s Wild, you don’t get points for being smart or well-informed. And you better not play fair if you want to win. Because, in this game, no move is -illegal, and the rules are always open to interpretation.

Greg Palast was born and raised in Los Angeles and studied economics under Milton Friedman. Upon graduating, he put his knowledge to work as a corporate investigator, taking down the hazardous and corrupt LILCO power plant and representing labor unions against the corporations that would destroy them. Greg is author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a book Michael Moore has called 'courageous reporting.'