Chapter One of Vultures' Picnic

Chapter One of Vultures' Picnic —
Read it Now

Thursday, November 3, 2011
by Greg Palast
After some tense discussion (Penguin was partly owned by Gaddafi, so you can imagine...), my publisher has given me the unusual right to give all my readers, for no charge, the entire first chapter of my new book Vultures’ Picnic.
Even if you don't get the book, I really want you to read the first chapter.
Download it.
Never before, in my decades as an investigator, have I taken you with me undercover, on the hunt into the lives, secret files, shopping bags and back rooms of the cruel and whacky One Percent.  And, for the first time, I've decided to let you in on Greg Palast, to open up my life and the inside of my operation, without censorship or BS.
In Chapter One, you will first encounter

• the MI6 agent who carried the bribes for British Petroleum and the Kalashnikovs;
• the billionaire's ex-trophy wife ready to burn the bed and open the files;
• the Radioactive Brick from address unknown, with documentation of a massive fraud by Tokyo Electric Power, arriving ten months before Fukushima melted;
• the secret memo of Treasury Secretary Geithner waiting for the go-ahead from Goldman Sachs and Citibank;
• the CIA spook turned billionaire with a score to settle and a devastating document from Kazakhstan;
• and a punch in the face just before an appearance on Amy Goodman's show.

(I deserved it, I suppose.  You read it and tell me.)
Chapter One takes you from a stake-out at dawn in New York, to the King of Mardi Gras to a shopping spree with a short dictator in Geneva, to suicide and murder in a Native Village in Alaska that is a key to the Deepwater Horizon investigation.
Vultures’ Picnic is the sum of my life and work getting even with the One-Percent, the cruelty merchants posing as captains of industry. I go after these guys because for me, it's personal. I admit, it's revenge.  You should know why.
I’ve been called America’s top investigative reporter and the funniest. I admit, the book has as many laughs as it has tears—because the ultra-rich whom I track across the globe are clowns—except with really terrific shoes and bodyguards.
So, just step into the Vultures’ Picnic circus tent for a few pages. Download it.  I think you'll want the rest of the tale (I don't eat the whale until Chapter Three, or get caught with my pants off in Ms. Jamaica's room until Chapter 9 or encounter The Hamsah in Africa until....)
Read the chapter, and if you want a copy of the book, you can pre-order it or donate $60 and I will send you a personally signed copy.  The book hits the stores on November 14.
This is full frontal Palast, for good or bad.
If you can handle Goldfinger, you can survive the rest.
***
Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, which will be released on November 14 by Penguin USA.
Pre-order it now!
For more information about Palast's brand new book and his book-signing events in your city, go to www.VulturesPicnic.org
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