The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

naomi klein jennifer wiltsie

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you.

"At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq'' civil war, a new law is unveiled that will allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves… Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the 'War on Terror' to Halliburton and Blackwater… After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts… New Orleans residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be re-opened." Klein not only kicks butt, she names names, notably economist Milton Friedman and his radical Chicago School of the 1950s and 60s which she notes "produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today." Stand up and take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld.

There's little doubt Klein's book--which arrived to enormous attention and fanfare thanks to her previous missive, the best-selling No Logo, will stir the ire of the right and corporate America. It's also true that Klein's assertions are coherent, comprehensively researched and footnoted, and she makes a very credible case. Even if the world isn't going to hell in a hand-basket just yet, it's nice to know a sharp customer like Klein is bearing witness to the backroom machinations of government and industry in times of turmoil. --Kim Hughes --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Genres nonfictionpoliticseconomicshistorysociologyphilosophybusinesssocial justiceaudiobookpolitical science

null pages, Audio CD

First published September 18,2007

Literary awards

warwick prize for writing, canadian booksellers association libris award, ola evergreen award, british columbia national award for canadian non-fiction,

Places

new orleans louisiana, chile, argentina, uruguay, bolivia, brazil, united kingdom, indonesia, russia, south africa, iraq, sri lanka,

This edition

Format: null pages, Audio CD
Published: September 18, 2007 by Macmillan Audio
ISBN: 9781427200884
ASIN: 1427200882
Language: English

Characters More characters

Augusto Pinochet

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean Army General, politician and a right-wing dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being self-d...
Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. He made major contributions to the fields of economics and statistics. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his achievements in the fields of consumption...
Ewen Cameron

Donald Ewen Cameron (1901 - 1967) was a Scottish-born psychiatrist who served as President of the American Psychiatric Association (1952 - 1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958 - 1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Bi...
Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

British politician Baroness Margaret Hilda Thatcher from 1979 served; measures against inflation, a brief war in the Falkland Islands in 1982, and the passage of a poll tax marked her prime administration to 1990. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Thatcher, LG, OM...
Lech Wałęsa

Lech Wałęsa (b.1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the first democratically-elected President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. A shipyard electrician by trade, he became the leader of Solidarity, and led a suc...
Boris Yeltsin

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1931 - 2007) was a Russian politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev&...

About the author

naomi klein

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses; support of ecofeminism, organized labour, and leftism; and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism, ecofascism and capitalism. As of 2021, she is an associate professor, and professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia, co-directing a Centre for Climate Justice.
Klein first became known internationally for her alter-globalization book No Logo (1999). The Take (2004), a documentary film about Argentine workers' self-managed factories, written by her and directed by her husband Avi Lewis, further increased her profile. The Shock Doctrine (2007), a critical analysis of the history of neoliberal economics, solidified her standing as a prominent activist on the international stage and was adapted into a six-minute companion film by Alfonso Cuaron and Jonás Cuarón, as well as a feature-length documentary by Michael Winterbottom. Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014) was a New York Times nonfiction bestseller and the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
In 2016, Klein was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her activism on climate justice. Klein frequently appears on global and national lists of top influential thinkers, including the 2014 Thought Leaders ranking compiled by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, Prospect magazine's world thinkers 2014 poll, and Maclean's 2014 Power List. She was formerly a member of the board of directors of the climate activist group 350.org.