The Grift is not a political book in the traditional sense. Instead, it takes a dispassionate look at a phenomenon enabled by conventional mass media, new digital channels, and informal word-of-mouth networks. It looks to actors playing their parts, but more broadly to mutual, bottomless need and dependence. Feasting off the spectacle, the speaker and the crowd crave one another. One will lie to the other, and both will lie to themselves. Who is grifting who?