Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff

by James B. Stewart

Overview

Bestselling author James B. Stewart investigates our era's most high-profile perjurers, revealing the alarming extent of this national epidemic.

America faces a crisis: an explosion of perjury and false statements occurring at the highest levels of business, politics, sports, and culture. In Tangled Webs, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James B. Stewart applies his investigative reporting and storytelling skills to four dramatic cases, all involving people at the top of their fields: Martha Stewart, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Barry Bonds, and notorious financier Bernard Madoff. Stewart draws on extensive interviews with participants-many speaking here for the first time- and previously undisclosed documents to show how such successful role models found themselves accused of criminal deception.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143120575
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/27/2012
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James B. Stewart is the author of Heart of a Soldier, the bestsellers Blind Eye and Blood Sport, and the blockbuster Den of Thieves. A former Page One editor at The Wall Street Journal, he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his reporting on the stock market crash and insider trading.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Part 1 Martha Stewart

1 "Can I Go Now?" 3

2 "Everyone Is Telling the Same Story" 45

3 "A Conspiracy of Dunces" 85

Part 2 I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby

4 "This Is Hush-Hush" 123

5 "All the Reporters Know It" 154

6 "Double Super Secret Background" 203

7 "A Cloud over the White House" 220

Part 3 Barry Lamar Bonds

8 "I'm Keeping My Money" 265

9 "Everybody Is Doing It" 303

10 "You're a Snitch" 331

Part 4 Bernard L. Madoff

11 "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" 363

12 "Some People Feel the Market" 392

Conclusion 433

Acknowledgments 443

Notes and Sources 445

Index 455

Editorial Reviews

Given that the cases remained in the headlines for years, Mr. Stewart has set himself a considerable task in ensuring that his book is not simply a rehash of yesterday's news. It is far from that. In addition to scouring and synthesizing the vast public record, including court material, amassed in each case, he conducted extensive interviews…with sources normally forbidden to talk, including lawyers and federal investigators. The result is a hugely engaging book that significantly deepens our understanding of how, in each instance, the mighty fell…Part of Mr. Stewart's magic as a writer is that he is both exhaustive and engrossing. The onrush of facts somehow never overwhelms a steady narrative current.
—The New York Times

Scott Turow

…provocative and hard-hitting…As in earlier books such as Blood Sport and Den of Thieves, Stewart offers riveting accounts of the unfolding of each drama. He brings to bear his superb skills as an investigative reporter, interviewing the main participants in the four cases, and acquiring previously secret grand jury transcripts and notes by FBI agents and other investigators through Freedom of Information Act requests.
—The Washington Post

Sissela Bok