Department of Fate: The Promise, the Power, and the Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institution
by Rachel Maddow
150 years of who the law actually serves.
For you if
you are watching the Department of Justice be dismantled and need to know what it was built for.
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$35 MSRP · Hardcover
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
The Department of Justice is supposed to be the institution that holds power accountable to the law — and for 150 years it has done that magnificently, catastrophically, and everything in between. Maddow traces the full arc: the founding, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Scare, civil rights murders, and the machinery of corruption alongside the rare moments of genuine courage. What emerges is not a reassuring institutional history but an honest one — the DOJ is not neutral, it is always steered by someone, toward something, for a reason. Understanding what that has looked like over 150 years is exactly the preparation for understanding what is happening to it right now.