The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
In her groundbreaking reporting from Iraq, Naomi Klein exposed how the trauma of the invasion was being exploited to remake the country in the interest of foreign corporations. She called it “disaster capitalism.” Covering Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami and New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic “shock therapy,” losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers.
In Blank Is Beautiful, Klein explores the deeply rooted impulse to erase what is inconvenient and start over from scratch. This journey takes her back to two formative experiments in the 1950s, both funded by the U.S. government. One was a covert university research project in Montreal that blanked the minds of psychiatric patients through sensory deprivation and electroshock—the basis of torture techniques from Pinochet’s Chile to Guant?namo Bay. The other was a program that turned the University of Chicago’s economics department into a factory for developing world politicians. Guided by Milton Friedman, students learned to remake their countries as laissez-faire utopias—but only after what was there had been wiped away. Tracing the imposition of these ideas in the decades since, Klein explodes the myth that the global “free market” triumphed peacefully and democratically. Instead, she argues, it has consistently relied on violence and shock, resulting in the rise of disaster capitalism.
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- ISBN: 9780805079838
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117 Reviews
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 19, 2007 Type: User Review |
The Most Important Book of the Century
This is with out a doubt the most important non-fiction book of this century so far. So much of the dots that I was connecting and thought I had pieced together were merely a facade to the greater whole. I am reading this book and can not believe...
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 5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 18, 2007 Type: User Review |
Shocking Indeed
Naomi Klein turns history on it's ear. Her scathing account reveals the true politics of shock and awe for what it is.
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 4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 18, 2007 Type: User Review |
I never thought I'd enjoy such a depressing book so much
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It really makes sense of a great many things about the contemporary military-industrial-disaster complex that previously seemed to be just insane or incompetent. Klein traces in frightening...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 16, 2007 Type: User Review |
A good book, but with some typographical flaws
In "The Shock Doctrine" Naomi Klein makes it very clear that she is no fan of Milton Friedman or the Chicago Boys free-market ideology that he espoused to Augusto Pinochet and others around the world.
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4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 16, 2007 Type: User Review |
The Objectivity of Yesterday Exposed by Its Fruits
Maybe we thought the age of ideology was over and its wars were done. But Klein examines the rise of a new ideology whose believers claim to own the future -- Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Market Fundamentalism. In recent decades market...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 14, 2007 Type: User Review |
From a mind who thinks Hezbollah is a model of Social and Economic Justice!
While Friedman was certainly no fan of Pinochet's human rights record, his assertion that free markets will lead to free people is certainly one that has played itself out time and time again. Strong economic growth creates the kind of well...
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 1.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 14, 2007 Type: User Review |
An Encroaching Darkness
The Shock Doctrine is an intensively researched and
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 14, 2007 Type: User Review |
Shock doctrine
Want to have nightmares based on reality? Read this book. The truth is generally preferable to lies
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 14, 2007 Type: User Review |
A must read for anyone interested in international economics/politics
Very well written. Klein argues her case very convincingly. Regardless of where you stand politically this book is a must-read. Perhaps it won't change your mind, but it'll give you something to wrap your brain around!
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 13, 2007 Type: User Review |
One of the Most Important Books Ever Written
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is must reading for anyone who wants a better world for all people. Once you start reading it, you can't put it down. It tells the truth about the Iraq War, Katrina, our "terrorist-frightened"...
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5.00/5 |
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