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misaqi's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Insanely informative and quite disturbing.
joelmeador's review against another edition
dark
informative
tense
fast-paced
4.5
man i fucking love this book and hate a lot of the people klein is writing about
haleyshort's review against another edition
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
4.0
This was horrific and fascinating and so valuable to read, especially having witnessed the impact of disaster capitalism after COVID and what we are already starting to see with the genocide in Palestine. It’s all so interconnected and so deeply fucked up.
gadicohen93's review against another edition
4.0
Just turned the last page like fifteen minutes ago, and promptly realized that this book gave me a lot of information to swallow. Thankfully, because of Klein's powerfully simple thesis, if I were ever to embroil myself in an alcohol-tinged dinner party conversation about the recent history/politics/economics of any of the countries mentioned in this book (aka Chile, Bolivia, the UK, Russia, South Africa, Poland, the Asian Tigers, China, Iraq, South Asia, Israel and America, in different periods ranging from early 70s to 2007), I would probably manage just fine.
The philosophy that Milton Friedman and his economics department at UChicago constructed, and that the IMF, World Bank, Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, etc. advanced throughout the world on behalf of corporate interests, made the world less democratic, both politically and economically. "The shock doctrine" is a revealing coinage, because it explains a tenet of this philosophy--the need to shock a population, either politically, militarily, economically, ecologically, into accepting complete, unbounded free enterprise (open up borders to multinational exploitation of economies, privatization of all sectors of the economy, remove price controls on goods--things that people wouldn't support democratically)--in quite literal terms.
It's kind of amazing that Klein managed to take all of these countries, in all of their separate recent conflicts, and tie them to this one man and his devastating ideology. It's amazing because it's totally convincing. Klein's thesis reaches so deeply into the past four decades of history that it's just so impressive and fascinating how she manages to support it so convincingly.
Some things I didn't like:
She overused the torture/shock metaphor. It was a powerful parallel, and it worked, but it was also not elegant enough for her to turn it into a major, repeated part of her thesis. I also thought that the writing could get dry at parts, just because of the overwhelming amount of information and repetition.
Overall, though, this book was a triumph. I took a class called "Globalization and Social Conflict" last semester, taught by a professor who was supposed to be incredible, but this book taught me more about the problems that arose from the ideology of globalization than those four months with Patrick Heller. So thank you, Noami Klein.
The philosophy that Milton Friedman and his economics department at UChicago constructed, and that the IMF, World Bank, Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, etc. advanced throughout the world on behalf of corporate interests, made the world less democratic, both politically and economically. "The shock doctrine" is a revealing coinage, because it explains a tenet of this philosophy--the need to shock a population, either politically, militarily, economically, ecologically, into accepting complete, unbounded free enterprise (open up borders to multinational exploitation of economies, privatization of all sectors of the economy, remove price controls on goods--things that people wouldn't support democratically)--in quite literal terms.
It's kind of amazing that Klein managed to take all of these countries, in all of their separate recent conflicts, and tie them to this one man and his devastating ideology. It's amazing because it's totally convincing. Klein's thesis reaches so deeply into the past four decades of history that it's just so impressive and fascinating how she manages to support it so convincingly.
Some things I didn't like:
She overused the torture/shock metaphor. It was a powerful parallel, and it worked, but it was also not elegant enough for her to turn it into a major, repeated part of her thesis. I also thought that the writing could get dry at parts, just because of the overwhelming amount of information and repetition.
Overall, though, this book was a triumph. I took a class called "Globalization and Social Conflict" last semester, taught by a professor who was supposed to be incredible, but this book taught me more about the problems that arose from the ideology of globalization than those four months with Patrick Heller. So thank you, Noami Klein.
potathoe's review
4.0
It’s interesting to read this so far into the future from when it was published. Seeing how this framework could be applied to covid and cop city.
jsdrown's review against another edition
4.0
The took me a while to get through. Not because of it's length(672 pages), but because it infuriated me so much. The thesis of the book is that conservatives operating under neoliberal ideology pass unpopular laws during disasters. This is because people are distracted by the scale of loss and destruction around them. Usually this means Republicans tend to privatize against public interest. It It also goes into great detail in how governments use shock tactics like torture(techniques discovered by the CIA) to create a blanket of fear surrounding anyone who oppose the shock doctrine. I was horrified of just how little I knew of the 1973 coup in Chile. I actually had to put the book down and find other sources because I was in disbelief.
Reading this is pretty timely because Elon Musk was just in the news openly suggesting using The Shock Doctrine on Puerto Rico, which is reminiscent of how a the Bush administration privatized the New Orleans schools system during Katrina. But I guess the internet loves Musk because space travel and ignore pesky facts like the factory conditions of Tesla and his love of Union busting.
Highly recommended and I will go out of my way to read more Naomi Klein in the future.
Reading this is pretty timely because Elon Musk was just in the news openly suggesting using The Shock Doctrine on Puerto Rico, which is reminiscent of how a the Bush administration privatized the New Orleans schools system during Katrina. But I guess the internet loves Musk because space travel and ignore pesky facts like the factory conditions of Tesla and his love of Union busting.
Highly recommended and I will go out of my way to read more Naomi Klein in the future.