When I began the research, I thought Bechtel was kind of the corporate arm of the US government, and was doing the jobs the US government wanted to do in regions that were strategic to US foreign policy, and by the time I finished the book, the US government looked more like the public affairs arm of Bechtel than the other way around.

Investigative reporter Sally Denton explores the long reach of the construction and engineering corporate giant Bechtel - across continents and decades of infrastructure and military projects, and into the policies and positions of the US government itself - and explains why Bechtel's secretive, steady rise to global power and influence is inseparable from the architecture of American empire, past and future.

Sally is author of the Simon & Schuster book The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World.