Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America

Nomi Prins, All the Presidents Bankers, and also Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World. Those two books illustrate the financialization of the US and global economy over time, and although dense, are well worth the effort. She has a new book out as of Oct, "Permanent Distortion: How Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever." Peter Anderas, Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America A very fun historical read, covering everything from textile machinery smuggling from Britain to the American colonies, to rum and whiskey smuggling into Indian Country in the 19th century, to opium smuggling to China, to Prohibition and the modern Drug War, cotton smuggling by the South to Europe to finance the South's Civil War army, and the smuggling of people from slaves to immigrants. Very eye-opening, a lot of America's 'wealthy families' got their first pool of capital in this manner. Also: Junji Ito, Uzumaki and No Longer Human William Gibson, The Peripheral and Agency