‘We the Corporations’ is our October book club pick

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We’re excited to announce our October pick for “Now Read This,” our book club in partnership with The New York Times. It’s Adam Winkler’s “We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.”

In the book, Winkler, a professor of law at University of California, Los Angeles, argues that the question of constitutional rights for corporations began long before the controversial Citizens United decision. (In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled the government could not keep corporations or unions from spending money to influence elections.)

In fact, Winkler writes, the fight for corporate personhood goes back to the very founding of the United States, and can be viewed as one of the most successful yet least understood civil rights movements in the country.

In a review of the book in The New York Times Book Review, Zephyr Teachout writes that “by nailing down the absurdities of the past, Winkler allows us to see how the future becomes more open…If we don’t like how corporations have appropriated civil rights in the name of citizens, we can change that.”

At the end of October, Adam Winkler will join us on the PBS NewsHour to answer reader questions about “We the Corporations.” We hope you’ll join us and read along.