Little Bosses Everywhere: The American Pyramid Scheme
by Bridget Read · 2025
Buy on AmazonA groundbreaking work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing: a massive money-making scam and radical political conspiracy that has remade American society. Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world’s greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM. They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and—most precious of all—financial freedom. If, that is, you’re willing to shell out for expensive products and recruit everyone you know to buy them, and if they recruit everyone they know, too, thus creating the “multiple levels” of MLM.…
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"My second choice is a book by Bridget Read. It's a book called Little Bosses Everywhere — a history of the American pyramid scheme. An incredibly illuminating, beautifully researched book."
Books from The Ezra Klein Show: We Didn't Ask for This Internet (Cory Doctorow & Tim Wu) · youtube.com