Behind a boardroom table at one of London's most fearsome law firms sits the man who wants to own the truth. He is wealthy, influential, a friend to princes and prime ministers. There is no door in the land that doesn't open to him. But who is he really? How did he make his money? The search for the answer leads investigative reporter Tom Burgis from Putin's St Petersburg to a blood-soaked town square in Uzbekistan, from Kazakh torture chambers to a Kathmandu cabal of Maoists. Places where reality is beaten into submission. The trail does not stop there. It leads on into the democracies, where the truth is said to be sacred -- but where today it is for sale. An entire industry has taken shape to serve those who are seizing the greatest prize of all. The power to choose what they want reality to be and impose that reality on the world. They decree what stories may be told about war and money and power, what we are permitted to know -- and what we are not. 'Write your book and you'll see what happens to it', says the rich man behind the boardroom table. Perhaps Cuckooland has been pulled from the shelves, censored or pulped. If not, inside is the thrilling story of the heist of our times: the takeover of reality itself.