"Carl E. Boggs argues that the political system of the United States is no longer democratic in any recognizable sense, and that this represents a profound threat to popular sovereignty, to comity among the world's nations, and to the health and well-being of the American people (not to mention other peoples, animals, and the global ecosystem). Phantom Democracy is an unflinching work, one that marshals an enormous amount of historical and contemporary fact to reveal the true scope of the corruption of the body politic. Nothing could be more timely or politically urgent, at a time of rising influence of the extreme political right in our own nation and many in Europe as well, than the careful, no holds barred critique of the American political order today in this work." - John Sanbonmatsu, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Department of Humanities and Arts, Worcester Polytechnic Institute