Jonathan M. Katz is a journalist and author. His first book, The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster, was a PEN Literary Award finalist and won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan Award for the year’s best book on international affairs. He is also a recipient of the James Foley/Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and other publications. In Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire (St. Martin’s Press), Katz traces the story of the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Butler went wherever the flag went. He served in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. He helped annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, led troops in China (twice), and helped invade and occupy Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Mexico. Yet in retirement, Butler turned against the war, big business, and imperialism, declaring: “I was a racketeer for capitalism.” Gangsters traces the rise of the U.S. global empire in the early 20th century and its legacies today.
