The New Republic’s invaluable Jonathan Chait has released his first book: The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics. Here’s the beginning of an excerpt in TNR that highlights Chait’s devastating combination of empiricism and wit:

American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane. The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago–that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government–are now so pervasive, they barely attract any notice.