The Cheating Culture

Your next-door neighbor offers to hook you up with free cable television. Or, when you unexpectedly owe hundreds of dollars in taxes, your accountant asks you to make up deductions since “the IRS doesn’t audit anyone.” Do you do it?

David Callahan thinks many of us would. And we wouldn’t be alone. While there have always been those who cut corners, cheating has risen in the last two decades: corporate scandals, doping in sports, plagiarism by journalists and students. Even ministers have been caught stealing sermons off the Internet. Why all the cheating? And why now?

Callahan pins the blame on the dog-eat-dog economic climate of the past twenty years. A harsh, unfettered market and unprecedented economic inequality have corroded our values, he argues, and threaten to corrupt the equal opportunity we cherish. What Callahan dubs the “Winning Class” has enough money and clout to cheat without consequences—while an Anxious Class believes that choosing not to cheat could cost them their only shot at success in a winner-take-all world.

Through revealing interviews and extensive data, Callahan takes us on a gripping tour of cheating in America and makes a powerful case for why it matters. Lucidly written, scrupulously argued, The Cheating Culture is an important, original examination of the hidden costs of the boom years.