Loot

"I sold my soul to the devil, but I got good pay for it."In an unnamed Southern state, Colonel Gideon Welles Steele runs the most powerful political machine in the region. When he elevates young idealist John Ambler to the governorship, he expects gratitude and compliance. What he gets is a conscience.Ambler wants to reform the tax code, protect the poor, and preserve the natural beauty of Harpeth Falls from industrial developers. But every reform requires a devil's bargain. Every progressive bill demands a signature on legislation that enables graft. And when Ambler finally draws a line he won't cross, the machine turns against him with all the sophisticated brutality of modern politics—frame-ups, blackmail, and manufactured scandal.Originally published in 1932, LOOT is a prophetic masterwork that predicted the machinery of modern American politics decades before Watergate, before Citizens United, before the 24-hour news cycle made the manipulation of democracy into a spectator sport.T.H. Alexander understood what many still refuse to see: that the cogs of the political machine do not move of their own accord, nor for glory. They move for money. They move for power. And the men who would change the system must first survive it.This restored edition brings a forgotten classic back to light—a novel that belongs on the shelf beside All the King's Men, The Last Hurrah, and Primary Colors. Written with the muscular prose of a man who knew politics from the inside, LOOT offers no easy answers and no clean heroes. Only the terrible, timeless question:What are you willing to become to do what you believe is right? Read more