Brian Saady strives to capture the spirit of one of the foremost whistleblowers of his time, Major General Smedley Butler, who described a racket “as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” Smedley Butler summarized his three decades of leadership in the military as “being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

Brian's work focuses on rackets in every sense of the word. That means the traditional idea of organized crime, i.e. drug cartels, terrorists, the mafia, etc. There’s also a deeper dive into the white-collar world of criminality, i.e. political corruption, corporate misconduct, the criminal justice system, bureaucracy, special interest groups, geopolitics, lobbyists, warfare, human rights abuses, and more.

There are too many journalists, to list concisely, who opened Brian's eyes and influenced his work. But, to name a few, Peter Dale Scott, William Blum, Seymour Hersh, Scott Horton, Robert Parry, and Alfred McCoy stand out from the crowd. However, arguably, the most significant creative influence for this author didn’t come from another writer, per se. George Carlin published several books, but he is best known for his stand-up comedy career. George Carlin was an iconic wordsmith and his boundary-breaking, no-holds-barred approach and his willingness to truly speak his mind were an inspiration to Brian, along with so many people.