A Financial Times best book of the year and one of The New Yorker’ s “Political Books to Help Us Make Sense of 2024” An eye-opening account of offshore finance: a secretive system making the rich richer while corroding democracy, capitalism, and the environment. How do the rich keep getting richer, while dodging the long arm of the law? From playboy billionaires avoiding taxes on private islands to Russian oligarchs sailing away from sanctions on their superyachts, the ultra-rich seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. That world is called offshore. Hidden from view, the world’s ultra-rich can use offshore finance to escape tax obligations, labor and environmental safety regulations, campaign finance rules, and other laws that get in their way. In Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism , sociologist Brooke Harrington reveals how this system works, as well as how it degrades democracy, the economy, and the public goods on which we all depend. Harrington spent eight years infiltrating this secretive world by training as a wealth manager, traveling from glossy European and North American capitals to developing countries in South America and Africa, to islands in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean, and South Pacific regions. Through interviews with dozens of wealth managers in nineteen countries, Harrington uncovered how this global network of offshore financial centers arose from the remnants of colonialism and has created a new, hidden imperial class This engrossing deep dive reveals what offshore finance costs all of us, and how it has colonized the world―not on behalf of any one country, but to benefit a largely invisible empire of a few thousand billionaires, who help themselves to the best society has to offer while sticking us with the bill. As politicians struggle to address the deepening economic and political inequality destabilizing the world, Harrington’s exposé of the offshore system is a vital resource for understanding the most pressing crises of our time. "[Harrington] writes very well about the rules, the way the [offshore] system functions, but also the values of the people who are inside of it. –Anne Applebaum on The Ezra Klein Show " ― Anne Applebaum, author of Autocracy, Inc , The Ezra Klein Show "Reading Offshore, I’m convinced that we can’t make sense of what has brought us to this current moment of political weirdness without taking into account the role of the ultra-rich and their enablers." ― Joshua M. Kim, Inside Higher Ed "Freedom is the liberty to not be taxed: “noblesse without oblige,” as Harrington calls it. Meanwhile, the rest of us stand to become poorer as the tax base is eroded and government support for education, transportation, and health and housing services declines." ― Vanessa Ogle, Dissent Magazine "A remarkable contribution to the sociological literature on economic inequality and global finance… Offshore is a tour de force and essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the hidden mechanisms of wealth and power in the twenty-first century." ― Kimberly Kay Hoang, Administrative Science Quarterly "You cannot understand the world of the super-rich without reading Brooke Harrington. Literary, intrepid, and utterly original, she writes with insight and humor. Offshore is a portrait of plutocracy that is drawn not from statistics but from real-world encounters that the world almost never sees." ― Evan Osnos New Yorker staff writer and author of Wildland "A riveting and eye-opening dive into the offshore world by a sociologist who, through participant observation methods, has revolutionized the study of the subject. This book is a must read for anyone concerned about the future of inequality and the future of democracy." ― Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations "At a time when autocracies are proliferating, and with them practices of institutionalized theft and corruption, sociologist and certified wealth manager Brooke Harrington reveals the workings of the secretive offshore system that props up autocrats and damages democracies around the world. An essential read for our times." ― Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen "An offshore wealth manager turned sociologist offers an ethnography of the tax havens that harbor the fortunes of the ultrarich and drain the world’s tax coffers." ― Publishers Weekly "Intriguing and timely, this book will be of interest not only to academics, but to anyone seeking an understanding of the hidden forces behind global wealth inequality." ― Kirkus Reviews Brooke Harrington is a professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth College, a certified wealth manager, and an advisor to the OECD and the European Parliament. She is the author of several books, including the best-selling Capital Without Borders .