In suburban New Jersey, in the summer of 2006, a recent college graduate answers a Help Wanted ad from a travel agency seeking tourists for "direct sales distribution." It doesn't take him long to figure out the function of the company-issued camera. During an initial trip to London, he also discovers his real role: Terrorist.

Instead of fleeing, he quickly finds himself swept up in a cast of characters from New York City's fashion and art world, the newsroom and the travel industry, government agencies and back alley dentists, all of them involved in the culture industry and its destruction of social and historical landmarks and signposts for money-and later, for something much greater than currency. From the south of France to Thailand and North Korea, the thread runs deeper, and as readers learn more about the culture industry, they also learn that no one is inculpable, and nothing is truly as it seems.