For more than thirty years, Kevin Phillips' insight into American politics and economics has helped to make history as well as record it. His bestselling books, including The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990), have influenced presidential campaigns and changed the way America sees itself. Now, in his current New York Times bestseller, Wealth and Democracy, Phillips turns his attention to the United States' history of great wealth and power, a sweeping cavalcade from the American Revolution to what he calls "the Second Gilded Age" at the turn of the twenty-first century. Widely acknowledging Phillips as one of the nation's most perceptive thinkers, reviewers have called him our "modern Thomas Paine." The New York Times Book Review noted in 1993 that "through more than 25 years of analysis and prediction, nobody has been as transcendentally right about the outlines of American political change."

Phillips charts the ongoing American saga of great wealth: how it has been accumulated, its shifting sources and its ups and downs over more that two centuries. He explores how the rich and politically powerful have frequently worked together to create or perpetuate privilege, often at the expense of the national interest and usually at the expense of the middle and lower classes. Phillips illuminates the dangerous politics that go with excessive concentration of wealth. He exposes the subtle corruption spawned by a money culture and financial power, evident in economic philosophy, tax favoritism and selective bailouts in the name of free enterprise, economic stimulus and national security.

Phillips' reputation as America's leading political analyst dates from the success and prophecy of his book, The Emerging Republican Majority, which was written in 1967, used in the 1968 GOP presidential campaign, and published in 1969.

The former editor-publisher of The American Political Report, and a contributing columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Phillips is a regular columnist for National Public Radio. He was a commentator for CBS TV News at the1984,1988 and 1992 Democratic and Republican conventions. Phillips' other books include, The Cousins Wars and Arrogant Capital.

NOTE: Bio is as it appeared in the Forum playbill for "Anatomy of Power" on October 11, 2002.