Charles Lewis has been doing original reporting and research about political power and influence in America since 1977. He and the organization he founded and led for 15 years, the Center for Public Integrity, have produced unprecedented, award-winning reports and books about democracy, corruption, and government accountability in the United States and around the world.
Co-author of five Center books and contributor to a sixth, Lewis is probably best known for The Buying of the President series of investigative books about the U.S. presidential candidates, their political parties and their special interest "career patron" relationships, published in 1996, 2000 and 2004. The most recent book was on the New York Times bestseller (short or extended) list for three months.
For years Lewis has traveled and spoken extensively about his books and other work, directly to public audiences and in hundreds of news media interviews. He has guest lectured at more than two dozen major colleges and universities, including American, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Cambridge (England), Columbia, Delaware, Florida Atlantic, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard, Ithaca, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, NYU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Ohio State, Pennsylvania, Penn State, Princeton, USC, Stanford, Trinity College (San Antonio, TX), Tufts, Virginia, US Military Academy (West Point) and Wisconsin.
The Buying of the President 2004 exposes the most powerful interests behind the major presidential candidates, and is the only book of its kind with investigative profiles and personal histories of leading White House aspirants, based upon millions of federal and state government records and interviews with more than 600 people, including former President Jimmy Carter and current or former Senators John McCain and Robert Dole.
(HarperCollins/Perennial: 2004)
New York Times Bestseller!
The Buying of the President 2000 first disclosed that Enron was the top “career patron” bankrolling George W. Bush, and was produced by roughly two dozen researchers, writers and editors who exhaustively scrutinized the backgrounds and financial entanglements of Bush, Vice President Al Gore and all of the major presidential candidates and their political parties.
(Avon: 2000)
The Buying of the President for the first time in American politics systematically examines the financial relationships and entanglements of America’s presidential candidates, exposing, among other things, their “Top Ten Career Patrons.” Inspiring a PBS Frontline documentary and syndicated by the New York Times, the book also features a Foreword by author Kevin Phillips.
(Avon: 1996)
Charles Lewis is executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop in Washington. A MacArthur Fellow, former ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes producer and best-selling author or co-author of six books, he founded two Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit new organizations, the Center for Public Integrity and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.